Reply #1: Excellent points made. [View All]

[Dora]

I really appreciate that you addressed the truth that we do not all have the same choices. Some people have more choices than others. Some people have no choices at all. Poverty and wealth have little to do with responsibility, and everything to do with privilege, history, and dis/ability.

There was so much that I missed in my upbringing that I'm trying to learn now. In my high school (graduated in '87) we were required to take "Free Enterprise," a course on American economics. The most I learned in that class was how to pretend to invest money in the stock market and then watch that fake money increase or decrease. There was no teaching of the real concerns of day-to-day finance, spending, and budgeting. No discussion of loans and interest rates, and how different loans are structured.

In my family, there was never any discussion of budgeting or bill-paying. My parents re-financed and re-financed and re-financed in order to keep us afloat. When I got my driver's license, they gave me a gas card and told me to "be responsible." Yeah, right. My saving and spending habits were never monitored or discussed when I was growing up, and I have vowed not to repeat that with my son. I want him financially "armed" by the time he's an adult, because in retrospect, I can see that I was completely unarmed by my ignorance.

So, today at 37, what am I learning? How to save, how to spend, how to budget. How to weigh the difference between wants and needs, and how to weigh the difference between needs and Needs. How to buy a house. How not to buy a car. Whether or not to use the credit card to buy those plane tickets for the in-laws' 50th anniversary party. Etc. and Etc.