Parents speak, too, about sports. It begins younger and costs much more than a generation ago. "We're suiting up little girls in ice hockey, because that somehow now is the sport du jour," Djabbari-Aslani says. Everybody's playing organized sports, and many come home with trophies — sometimes just for showing up. Parents also mention wild money spent on "enrichment" activities, seeking that coveted edge for their kids. Tutoring begins in kindergarten and weekends are packed with classes. Yet, despite the expense, parents aren't confident that kids are gaining much.
"It's crazy," says Georgette Pascale, a mother of two who lives in Pittsburgh and runs her own PR firm. Spending, she says, "is almost becoming a competition."
Parents sound most horrified by (and yet bound by) what should be the most expendable items on the list — the endless array of stuff plastered with the likenesses of Dora, Barbie, Superman and their omnipresent pals. This is the cheap crap that parents actually describe as cheap crap — stuff people are both amazed to be buying and apparently unable to avoid. On our watch, licensed characters have infiltrated nearly every aisle of the big-box stores and supermarkets. According to Susan Linn, author of "Consuming Kids: Protecting our Children from the Onslaught of Marketing & Advertising," sales of brand licensed toys in 2006 hit $22.3 billion.
From Green Giant's SpongeBob green beans and Eggo's Barbie waffles to "Cars"-themed wall paint and Spiderman lamps, piles of kid-centric stuff are sprouting in houses everywhere.
3. Find out how you look on paper.
Contact the national credit bureaus (Experian, TransUnion and Equifax) for
your credit scores and reports. These companies may have conflicting
data on you, so it's important to get reports from all three. If you want to
spend a few dollars on frequent updates, check out myfico.com. Inaccurate
information could be lowering your credit scores, thus raising your interest
rates. So contact the companies if you find anything amiss.
4. Educate yourself.
American schools don't teach us to handle our money, says Jim King, a
financial planner in the Chicago area. "You'd think it would be such a basic
lesson before you graduate," King says, "but people don't have an
understanding of this." Even if you were the kid who dreaded math class,
you need to understand things like tax deferred investing and life insurance now
that you're a parent. So start studying: Do research online, talk with
knowledgeable friends and seek out useful classes in your neighborhood
(though be wary of companies offering sales pitches disguised as education).
5. Consider outside advice.
We hire personal trainers to keep us healthy and therapists to keep us sane,
so why not consider working with someone to get your finances in order? You
don't want to add a huge new expense, of course, and you may not need
outside advice. So don't commit to working with a financial planner too
quickly. But it may be worth interviewing an expert or two, just to see what
they can offer you.
Some are things kids have always had, like bikes and T-shirts and vitamins. But these characters now cause many parents to buy a slew of separate items for their kids — hand soap, towels, Band-Aids, even separate food — rather than having the kids use what they already buy for themselves. It may be just a few items per shopping trip, but multiplied out over fifty-two weeks it adds up to hundreds of dollars that could be growing in a 529 account for college.
"When I tell my father how much we're spending, he says, 'You guys have to start saving,'" says Allyson Mazer, a mom of two who lives in LA. "But I'm like, where do you want to me to save? Where?"
Everyone lists things they shouldn't be buying. Yet no one seems quite sure what possesses them to spend little pieces of the college fund each weekend at Target. Part of the problem may be that our understanding of commerce was forged in front of the television, suckling on ads for Frosted Flakes and Malibu Barbie and Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. We were the first generation that had advertisers constantly whispering in our prepubescent ears that spending brings happiness. "Children's television was deregulated in the mid-1980s," says Linn, "and right after it was deregulated, ten of the best selling toys had links to media. In the mid-1980s, it became okay to create a program for the sole purpose of selling toys."
Did all those sales pitches burrow so deep into our cerebral cortexes that the capacity to say no to a Spider-Man wristwatch never formed? "There was a lot of noise in the marketing community throughout the '80s that more and more research said children recognized company logos even before they could read," says Elizabeth Elam, associate professor of marketing at Western New England College. We grew up hearing that we really needed the Cabbage Patch Doll and the Transformers and the Happy Meal. Has all that marketing undermined the parental ability to figure out what we, and our kids, actually need?
Lines of credit function like the benevolent, deep-pocketed parents we had or wish we'd had. If we really, really want that new leather jacket, that new laptop, they give us the money. But in the heat of tearing open boxes from Amazon, it's easy to forget that lenders aren't giving us stuff simply because we make them proud. Those folks at American Express are gonna keep charging interest until we pay back every dollar or declare bankruptcy trying.
©2008 Melissa Rayworth and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Melissa Rayworth writes features stories each week for The Associated Press and other news outlets. Her work has appeared in magazines and newspapers across the globe, including The Washington Post and L.A. Times. She lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and two sons, but makes frequent trips to New York City for work and play. |
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