More Drama Across The Road

Just to add to my neighbors already overloaded plate.  Child number two gets picked up by the police and arrested this past weekend for having drug paraphernalia in her back pack.  The car she was riding in got pulled over and to make a long story short, all the passengers got frisked and checked out and she got snagged.  So did three of the other occupants.  My neighbor got a call to come down to the local police station at some ungodly hour of the night. She was so angry at her child that she did not want to bail her out. She wanted to leave her there until Sunday or Monday. The police discharged the kid anyway and set a court date for a few weeks from now. Again, this kid had almost no remorse about what had happened and in fact gave her mother lip when they got home about "how she did not care" if she got arrested and it was "bogus" since she only had the paraphernalia on her and no drugs.  And she copped an attitude when her parents said she was grounded, could not use the car and could not have her friends over.  She started on the I'm over 18 BS, you can't ground me and my neighbor said fine, go leave, get your own place. Which we know won't happen since child #2 has no money.  Plus this apartment she was going to move into to be with/near her boyfriend was going to be funded by boyfriends mother. Not anymore.  Boyfriends mother made it very clear that she would help her son with a place to live since he was going to a school that did not provide housing, not to allow son's girlfriend and these other folks to sponge off of her rent payments. Since said boyfreind also got arrested at the same time boyfriends mother is not thinking happy thoughts about his choice of friends at this point in time.  My neighbor has to take the day off work without pay to accompany child #2 to court in a few weeks.  She can't spare that money, but has to do this.  She also can't afford a lawyer, I don't know what the kid will do or what the Public Defender will do.

I did all I could do which was sit on my couch, offer my neighbor glass after glass of wine, listen to the whole story and shake my head. My neighbor left this AM for her vacation.  I gave her $40 and told her spend it foolishly on herself.  I can truly say she needed the $40 more than I do.

Teaching Kids to Manage Money

I am a big watcher of breakfast TV, usually Good Morning America. This morning, there was an excellent piece done by Mellody Hobson on teaching your kids how to handle money. Since I am writing a series of blog posts about my past and how my parents NEVER taught me about money management, I poured an extra cup of tea and watched the segment.

Quote:

Discussing money with their children is something many parents dislike greatly, according to Charles Schwab & Co.'s latest online survey. While they were eager to teach their offspring about other milestones, they were sheepish about handling money and budgeting issues.

In fact, 70 percent had taught their children how to do laundry, but only 34 percent had showed them how to balance a checkbook. The gap is more curious because many parents wished they had learned more about budgeting, saving and investing when they were young. Fifty-seven percent said they wished they had learned more about money as teenagers.

This is a scary statistic, only 34% of parents surveyed have taught their kids how to balance a checkbook. I know my parents did not teach me, I learned how to do it by reading the back of my bank statement for my first checking account. No one every sat me down and taught me about credit cards and credit card debt either.

You can read the whole article here. To see what others have said about the segment and the article, you can click here.