[quote=UCGal]I agree w early retirement… there are a lot of kids who aren’t working or going to school and basically need, IMO, a kick in the pants to stop sponging. I have a coworker who can’t figure out how to motivate his daughter into getting a job or getting serious about college. His wife refuss to consider the tough love approach, so they’re enabling her less than productive lifestyle.
And BG – I grew up in coastal San Diego in the 70s… I wasn’t ready for college when I graduated high school… but I got a job and moved out 2 weeks after my 18th birthday… I think it’s more of a generational thing than a geographical thing that is keeping kids at home these days. I see kids lingering at home well into their 20’s back east too.[/quote]
Yeah UCGal,
I see this ALL the time with some American clients and especially my British clients. Most of my super wealthy clients are from the UK. And I find many of them just spoil their kids rotten to the point that the kids won’t accomplish anything in life in the future. So the parents that do this and not administering a bit of “tough love” are contributing to their kids becoming losers.
One of my British clients bought several properties that were supposed to be “investments”. Well, his sons talked him into “taking a year off from college and living abroad” to learn Spanish. Well, it went from being a supposed rental investment property to a place that his college drop out son moved into as a party pad. This was a few years ago and he still lives in it. Oh, did I mention that his younger brother now lives in one of the other ones.
If you see your brother partying, not going to school and having dad pay for everything….you might tend to want to do the same thing.
I realize this girl in the story above isn’t in that situation but I think you have to have a healthy mix because I know plenty of parents that should have kicked the kids out and taught them the world isn’t an easy place and money doesn’t grow on trees.
I also know someone that sounds like this girl in the story above. She was an employee for one of the companies I owned. Totally strange strange situation because she was a super intelligent girl. College degree, fluent in 3 languages. Well, one day she told me she was quitting. I asked her why as I was surprised she was leaving after working for me several years.
You can imagine my surprise when she told me she was engaged. I was shocked as just a few months before she was single. I asked where she met this guy??? Her answer? Facebook!!
So then she tells me she talks to him on the phone every night and they send emails all day. I mistakenly assumed she met him face to face. To be honest, I didn’t really want to hear too much because I thought she was totally stupid to get engaged to someone she knew nothing about.
Well, here’s the kicker….she said she was moving to the USA to live with him. So she quit her job, and was going to move to another country. I told her it was a mistake.
Fast forward to now. Last I heard ..sure enough the day before he is supposed to arrive to get her and help her move. She gets some random email from a gmail account saying it’s her fiance’s friend and that he died.
The sad part is she believed all of it. Later the guy admitted he was just playing with her. But reading the story of the girl getting engaged to the guy from online made me think of this. You have people doing totally stupid things.
