Is Wealth Evil?
Dear all,
I found this great write-up about children from rich families in an old copy of TIME magazine. Not only is it very well written, but it also highlights a lot of truths about how wealth (if not used properly) can be the cause for failure in your child’s life. Money itself is neutral… it is what we do with it that determines whether it is positive or negative.
I’ve had many students complain about how spoilt their children are. If a family is wealthy, their children will have many more opportunities to become spoilt. However, whether the family is rich or poor does not ultimately determine whether their kids will become spoilt or not. It all boils down to the parents’ attitude towards money and their children.
I always remind my students that children learn their behavior from someone, somewhere. As young children, we spent half our life at school and the other half at home… and so we picked up and developed habits from both places. Therefore, if we are surrounded by good role models at home, we will pick up good habits; if we are surrounded by bad teachers and naughty classmates at school, we will pick up bad habits; and vice versa. Perhaps some parents are unaware of this potential damage to their children.
It is never too late to re-educate our children or even to re-educate ourselves. Although it may be tough, it is still the best gift you can give to your child. After all, isn’t it better to re-educate them while they are in your care, rather than them learning it the hard way when they are adults and perhaps making mistakes they may not recover from?
Please read the article. All the advice given here, combined with spirituality, is something I would advice parents to shower their children with.
Tsem Rinpoche
(Click on image to enlarge)
No Free Rides, Kid.
For successful parents, leaving wealth to the next generation is easy. More difficult is passing to privileged children the values and traits that will help them lead productive, fulfilling lives
By Ling Woo Liu
Christabel Lee was 12 years old and had just saved up $90 for a new bicycle when her wallet disappeared with all her cash in it. She asked her parents if they would buy the bike for her, but they refused. It’s not that they couldn’t afford to help. Lee’s father is vice chairman of a major Hong Kong conglomerate; her family is rich. Lee, now 36 and the managing director of a printing company, remembers crying about the injustice of it all. But today, she recognizes that she gleaned a valuable lesson from the incident: money does not necessarily grow on family trees. “[My dad] instilled strict financial discipline on us when we were young,” she says. “It taught me that it’s good to plan and save, and that no one’s going to come save you if you screw up.”
Lee’s experience shows how one family answered a common question facing wealthy (and some not-so-wealthy) parents: When children grow up amid plenty, how can they be taught to be sensible about money? We’re not talking about checkbook-balancing skills. There is a plethora of practical advice for that, just as there’s no shortage of guidance when it comes to transferring assets from one generation to the next. Harder to come by is advice for parents on how to bequeath to their children not just a fat inheritance, but also the values and work ethic that produced their nest eggs in the first place. “So many wealthy families don’t know anything about raising kids in a healthy environment,” says Thayer Willis, author of Navigating the Dark Side of Wealth: A Life Guide for Inheritors. The daughter of billionaire parents herself, Willis says she was a “spoiled brat” in her youth. She quit jobs whenever things didn’t go her way and spent money without limits – until she realized this was not the path to a satisfying existence. “Outsiders think, ‘If I just had financial wealth, life would be so easy and I would be happy,'” says Willis, who now counsels wealthy families. “But none of us is given a meaningful life. We’re meant to build a meaningful life.“
Of course, the children of wealthy parents don’t always grow up to be self-indulgent, feckless adults, just as deprived children don’t always become driven overachievers. But literature and media are stuffed with rich-kids-gone-bad stories, and there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that cosseted offspring can lack the thrift, independence, ambition, persistence and entrepreneurial spirit that contributed to their parents’ success. Most people have heard of the “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves” curse, which holds that family wealth, once accumulated, is typically dissipated by the third generation because trust-fund babies, having little regard for the money that has come to them without toil, lack the motivation to strive. It’s a worry even to – perhaps especially to – the superrich. In a recent interview in London’s Sunday Times newspaper, Indian-born steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal said flatly that “money is a curse,” and that he was concerned that extreme wealth might be spoiling his young kids. In June, Microsoft founder Bill Gates reiterated that he would donate most of his $58 billion to charity, rather than give it to his three children. That’s tough love.
According to Willis, money alone isn’t the problem. Rather, it’s that kids in wealthy families often are given too much freedom, which leads to a sense of entitlement and a lack of accountability. Underlying the selfishness is insecurity, say Jon and Eileen Gallo, co-authors of the book Silver Spoon Kids: How Successful Parents Raise Responsible Children. “They grow up worried inside, thinking, ‘Do people like me for who I am?'” says Jon. “It’s about developing an identity of their own that’s separate from their parents and their parents’ money.” Being born into wealth often means having a nanny, maid, driver and bank trust officer – in other words, having a staff of people to solve all of your problems. “Sometimes very wealthy parents use money to fill in potholes in the road so that kids don’t have to deal with problems,” says Jon. “But dealing with the potholes is how you learn about life.”
Parents don’t have to be child psychologists to help their kids become responsible adults. Some common parenting set pieces can lay a good foundation. In homes with nearly limitless assets, the challenge is to create limits, so that children can learn that money is something to be earned and husbanded – it is not a birthright that they are free to squander at will. One of the first steps parents should take is setting up an allowance for kids as soon as they start school, according to the Gallos. “The purpose [of an allowance] is to learn how to budget, to be able to plan for things to buy – to postpone gratifications,” says Eileen. When the kids reach high school, parents may want to introduce debt into their financial vocabularies by allowing them to use credit cards. But the Gallos recommend training wheels first, in the form of debit cards or cards with a low spending limit.
To teach teens respect for a paycheck, real-world work experience is invaluable. “When you’re making 5 pounds [$7.80] an hour, you come to realize that money isn’t easy to come by,” says British university student Harry Elgood, the son of successful Oxfordshire entrepreneurs, who started working as a bartender when he was 18. While some parents might be eager to bring their offspring into the family business, the Gallos recommend that teens be encouraged to take jobs elsewhere, at least initially, so they won’t get special treatment from co-workers. “To have a boss, to be part of a team, to get to work on time – there are so many skills kids can get from jobs,” says Eileen.
Willis, the author and reformed spoiled brat, stresses that children need to experience the lives of the less fortunate to develop a “grateful spirit”. She advises finding charitable causes for kids and ensuring that they see the results of their philanthropy. By researching different programs and working with a team of volunteers, youngsters can gain valuable perspective on how the rest of the world lives and how better to prioritize their own “give-save-spend ratio,” says Willis. Helping others is a powerful tool for teaching children about sacrifice and detachment from material things, she says.
Children learn a lot just by observing their parents’ behavior, so mom and dad need to set a good example, too. Carl Tancaktiong, son of the founder of Philippine fast-food empire Jollibee, admits his childhood was pretty plush. “I don’t remember not getting anything I wanted,” he says. Yet Tancaktiong, 28, says he has grown up to be reasonably frugal, not because his parents lectured about money, but because they had down-to-earth spending habits themselves, eschewing luxury-brand clothing and expensive cars. Tancaktiong, a general manager of one of the company’s Chinese chains, says he and his siblings recognized early that the family fortune was not their personal piggybank. “The three of us knew this money wasn’t earned by us,” Tancaktiong says. “Had we been out of control with money, we would’ve had a big guilty conscience.”
Wealthy parents aren’t completely on their own when it comes to teaching their kids about money. Private banks are increasingly offering programs to educate the scions of high net-worth customers in the finer points of financial management. “People tend to assume that if you have wealth, you have knowledge of wealth,” says Sebastian Dovey, managing partner of Scorpio Partnership, which in August helped Swiss bank UBS roll out Dialogue, a new financial-education service. But having money and being savvy about it are “not directly linked.” he says. Another such program is Citi Private Bank’s annual NextGen conference, which has been held in Singapore and Hong Kong since 2003. Each year, the bank sends invitations to the adult children of clients whose net worth exceeds $10 million. Participants attend investment seminars, play finance-related games and take part in team-building and social events.
The proliferation of such programs might tempt parents to outsource their kids’ financial education. But private banks can’t impart the personal values and work ethic that help ensure success in life from an early age. Those character traits, like genes and family wealth itself, must be passed down from the parents. – WITH REPORTING BY WILLIAM LEE ADAMS/LONDON
PARENTAL PLAYBOOK
How Not to Raise a Spoiled Brat
Tips for transferring your personal assets and values, according to wealth counselor Thayer Willis
Baby on Budget
Coach your child to save for a specific, special purchase, like a dog or an iPod. Use the words no and later liberally.
Earning is Learning
Working for pay builds kids’ self-esteem and competence.
Be a Super Role Model
Your involvement in philanthropy and community service encourages kindness and gratitude in your kids.
The Drift of Thrift
Don’t blow money at the mall. Show your children how to consume wisely and the rewards of living on less.
[Extracted from: Time magazine, November 24, 2008]
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Money is an important factor in everyone’s life. Holding cash on you hand isn’t enough. It’s how you value it, use it, grow it, and spend it, that matters most. Money is only a tool or medium to achieve happiness, it may not guarantee happiness.
In this Covid -19 pandemic situations we know many lost their jobs , The middle class shrunk as thousands of people were pushed in poor class . On the other hand rich people were not affected much financially.
If one seek happiness, friendliness, charitable disposition, concern for others, and similar attributes, no amount of money can buy these, you get them only by cultivating positive attitudes at the very young age.
Contrary to what most people think, it is not money or the love of money which is the root of evil—it is greed, a love of power and authority, poverty, and a fear of want which are often the roots of evil in this world.
https://bit.ly/3CNlpU1
Money is not everything in life and is not evil . But one uses it in a wrong way it creates harm and unhappiness. Money is the worst discovery in human life but it is the most trusted material to test human nature. With the money , we have use it wisely as one without money in life is tough and rough. If have more money than we need it is good to give away helping in charity and to those who needed badly. To teach our children the right way, never spoiled them with attachment. There is no easy way or short cut .
Thank you Rinpoche for this profound teachings.
I personally think wealth is not evil. When wealth is passed to our children, they have to be taught about the value of the money and how to manage it. If everything is given easily to them, they will not have the skill to manage things well.
It is good to pass the wealth to our children, but if they are not taught how to manage it, it will bring more harm to them than good. Since the money comes so easily, they will not work hard. All they do is indulging in enjoyment. Money distracts them from developing good values in themselves.
When they have spent all the money, the problems will come. They don’t have any skill to work because they have been busy spending money and having fun. They are not able to endure the hardship, they will quit anytime when things are getting tough for them. For the benefits of the children, the parents should let the children learn how to manage their wealth and life.
Money is not evil but evil to some. I always remind my children that nothing is free in this world .what we want we always got to work hard for it. Its through hardship they learn to value and appreciate things much better than what is given to them. Wealth is not evil but it depands on how you view it and use it. From a Buddhist perspective, excessive wealth and an extravagant way of life can become a source of attachment, and create a fear of loss and of ceaseless craving. The craving for wealth and possessions can lead us into all kinds of temptation. Wealth is temporary and no path to happiness yet money also does an awful lot of good if use wisely. We may attempt to rationalize our greed by closing our minds and hearts to the needs and rights of others. In the process, we could end up being stingy, bitter, unhappy and isolated. We as parents plays an important part in bringing up our children . Everything starts at home and starts early to bring up children to be a good ,kind compassionate person. We should set an example to them .
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this article.
As many thing in samsara, we need to understand the truth and having correct knowledge and attitude towards wealth. Wealth can be evil because it stimulates greediness. Wealth can be holy when it’s used to spread the Buddha dharma and help others.
We have an imputed mind by seeing what wealth is, hence it can be very different from all. A little boy who grown up in the monastery, living a life happily without wealth, hence wealth is not important to him.
For those who grown up in poverty, living a life without food if they have no money, hence money is everything to them. They do whatever they can to make money. They may end up very successful and charitable or powerful and evil, very extreme.
For those who were born with silver spoon may have no idea what poverty is, hence wealth is never an issue to them. Some even think money can solve all problems. These people normally living a life feeling lonely and empty.
There are many wealth deties in Buddhism, we also have wealth vase to generate wealth, so is that mean those are evil? Dorje Shugden is a wealth protector who provides wealth for spirituality. Wealth become evil is when greed arises. Greed is part of our deluded mind and karma. Hence we got to be extra careful and watch our mind when handle with wealth.
We all need to learn and know what is the value of our lives. That will help us to walk through a meaningful life.
Is wealth is evil, then what about poverty. Saying wealth is evil, is just like to see things in black or white. Wealth itself is not the issue, as long as it is attained by honest means, not hurting others and used for the benefit of the wider society. The issue is how you educate your children about wealth. And also when we enjoy life too much with our wealth, then our attachment to the money is an evil because it doesn’t help in our spiritual path.
Is the money evil, it depend how we view on it. Child born in wealthy family not nesserry must spoil. It depend how their parent educate their child well or not using money correctly. My opinoin, is important to educate children appreciation and gladfuness thing they have since young. So they will understand and treasure it what they have around them.
Never then that, child have to expose in reality in life and teach them to work hard to gain the result. Parents should not simply encourage their kid focus in metirial thing whether in their childhood or grown older. Because children will follow their own parents as their example.
Yes, a child born in a wealthy family has got all the monetary advantages. They could travel oversea even before they learn to walk, they could drive a BMW to school when everybody riding motorbike etc. But that also depend on how the parents raise their children. A child born without knowing the value of money, without knowing the family is wealthy. Is the parents responsibility to educate the children. In our generation, whether wealthy parents or not wealthy parents tend to give the best to their children, because of what they lack of in their childhood, as simple as a smart phone, which is not necessary. With that, indirectly the parents spoiled the children. Family education since young is very important. In a better way, both parents and children should start practicing Dharma.
How we raise our kids really depends how we are equipped with knowledge wise. I have seen in the past wealthy and poor families actually produced brats and good kids. For me, it’s very much depending on how we use wealth to raise our children and wealth is not necessarily a bad thing. It is very much depending on how we use it.
Wealth is evil if we do not know how to use wisely. Wealth is also evil of it breaks the relationship of people. Compare the nowaday kids with the kids during our parent’s time. Kids nowadays are spoilt and spoonfed by parents wanting them to have the best of everything. Kids during our parent’s time need to work hard for everything including money. In my opinion, for a family who is wealthy, it is best to let their kids work their hard way up instead of asking the kids to work in their parent’s company which will not benefit them in any way. Wealth is good when it is put to good use such as Dharma. To me, kids with Dharma grows up to be a better person.
Since small, I have been hearing the phrase saying a rich family’s wealth does not last for 3 generations, first generation earn it, second generation spend it as they are spoilt by their parents and third generation finished up the balance from their father. I always had the impression that money is no good due to the stories I’ve heard from my families and drama series, but then when I grow up, I learned that it is not about money that is evil, it is the person who used the money, money is not alive, how can it be good or bad?
The kids action reflected who their parents are, because everyone starts their education at home, and that is the most important period, when the parents does not teach them properly when they are small, after growing up, it is not easy to teach anymore because they already formed their mind and thinking, nowadays parents often use money to buy their children’s heart, they cultivated an easy life to their children, so when the children grown up, they won’t have the ability to overcome difficulties or they became spoilt kids or adults, Parents should show a good example, they must cultivate the habit of their children that when they want something, they have to work for it and not getting it easily. Especially in todays world, everything comes so easily, it is even much easier for the kids to be spoilt, so home education is really very important. Giving birth is not difficult, it is the responsibilities to grow the kids that is important.
I believe a lot of time how the children behave pretty much influence by the parents and the environment. Education from the family is very important as the children will adopt and imitate what they have learned and experienced and act it out be it consciously or subconsciously in their behavior.
Personally for me, wealth is neutral but how we manage them that make the different. At this time of age, wealthy parents often use wealth to replace the responsibility that the children need to learn. This way it make the children doesn’t know how to be independent, doesn’t know how to appreciate, doesn’t know how to ear their living, doesn’t know how to continue their life when they fall or choose the negate way to chase for wealth because what happened around them was just using money to gain everything.
The value of gratitude, generosity, kindness, compassion, sharing is very important to plant in our children’s mind. With this value they don’t live for money but live their life meaningfully with money. Learning dharma is very important to educate our children to live their life beneficially and we are very fortunate to have Rinpoche to give us so many teaching that able to educate our children as well.
I recalled back when I was young, my parents would hold tight allowance on my daily needs. I don’t really understand their reason then until I learn to earn living for myself by starting work as part time. I’ve been brought up in the way that money is crucial in our daily lives. Therefore, whether wealth is evil or not, it depend how we apply it.
Wealth is evil if one attached with strong desires that could until cause harmful or death to others. If we could make good use of our wealth / money into benefit others, good karma or merits we will received. Overall, it’s our mind that control our desires and thought.
Yes, education starts at home. Parents play a very important part for young children to mould them into becoming responsible adults. Some parents over provide for their children and when asked, we replied that we want our children to have what we ourselves did not have when we were our children’s age. As parents we think that if our children do not have to worry about money and could have what they wanted, then our children would be happy. The vast majority of people believe that having lots of money bring perpetual happiness, and with this belief we provide for and instill the same thinking to our children. I am not judging what is right or wrong but I know money does not really bring happiness. I believe as parents, we should teach our children to be generous, be kind, be caring, help those in need. My children are very fortunate to have met Rinpoche at such a very young age, to receive dharma teachings, to come under the care and protection of Rinpoche. They also have the great chance to practice dharma by caring for animals, be in nature and plant vegetables, raising funds through flea market, helping the underprivileged via Kechara Soup Kitchen.
What I noticed nowadays, are how most children actually pick up the habit of wanting more, from their friends but of coz the parents had a little part in it too.
Since young, I would earn my extra income through working part time. I am glad that my dad let me as I got to know the importance of earning and saving at that time.
Parents work so hard for themselves and their family but doesn’t mean they must give their children what they want. It’s the same as kids crying to get what they want. I am sure they didn’t learn that habit the moment they were born. But parents just give in, in order to satisfy the children, save the time and of coz, and to keep them quiet. It is with utmost important to teach the young the value of money and gratitude and instil it in them all the time, not only when they are young. Giving them all the material wealth in the world won’t help them much but giving them the wealth of wisdom, does.
4 steps to wealth according to Lord Buddha:
diligence, thriftiness, associating with moral people and leading a life of simplicity.
https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features/buddhist-attitude-to-wealth
You can’t get Enlightened if you’re starving.
Whatever you do with that wealth – actions have consequences.
There are so many Wealth Deities: Dorje Shugden, Dzambhala, Ganesh, Kubera, Lakshmi, White Mahakala, Vasudhara, Vaishravana, Cai Shen, Zhao Gong Ming, Gaun Yu, Nang Kwak, Bu Dai to name but a few – I don’t think any of them would want to see their blessings being wasted on what is unskilful, and PLEASE BE CAREFUL NOT TO INVOKE DEMONIC FORCES FOR ANY PURPOSES – speak to a skilled teacher to discern what is Divine and what is Demonic
Abraham Lincoln said: “You can’t help the poor by being one of them.”
Money is needed to build schools and hospitals, or you could have a fleet of chauffeur driven golden Rolls Royces,
other examples: like electricity: life support machine or an electric chair?
Fire: to cook and to warm or to set people and things on fire?
Water: to slake thirst, to clean and to wash or to drown people?
Drugs: to cure people, alleviate pain, or make people into addicts & kill them?
Doctors & nurses can just as easily kill people as well as cure them, none of what I’ve mentioned is either evil or good by itself – it depends how it is used.
As the chinese saying goes “Family Wealth does not pass 3 generations”
I find the saying very true as I myself has seen wealth lost and wealth gained amongst my friends. What the author wrote is very true “real world work experience is very valuable” …Yes it is cause that is how a person can be trained to work without money bailing you out every time something goes wrong. If you have a job and you need to pay bills to survive, you will be determined to do whatever it takes to perform with results. That is the real world. Whereas, if you have a safety net behind you ie trust funds/big bank accounts/ parents bailing you out…you won’t go all the way and with any slight difficulties, you tend to give up.
I always believe Wealth is not good or bad, is just how ones uses them.
Wealth is not evil or negative it all depends on how one uses it. The article does come to the conclusion that education the rich kids will go a long way to help them grow up not with a false sense of security or ideas of how the world should work. And the reality of how money comes about, and the reality of the space they are in.
There are people who may have the ‘karma’ to live in luxury over many lifetimes and beyond this one perhaps due to wealth earned by their parents. How many can profess that? Wealth or Luxury that one lives off, can come to an end when the karma runs out.
Growing up as a Christina, one of the verses from the Bible that I remember well and has stayed with me as a strong reminder is Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is the root of all evil”.
Our history has shown us nothing less. How our greed for money has destroyed many, how the lack of money has equally destroyed many. A part of human civilization seems to be shaped by this concept we created called money. A man-made entity that seems to feed on our ego, our greed, our desire.
Tragic stories about how the world richest have destroyed their children, stories from the rich saying how money doesn’t buy happiness has very little impact in discouraging anyone to still pursue monetary wealth. It doesn’t matter where you turn, we almost cannot escape talk about money. Not even in religious organizations, churches, temples or monasteries. It is that hard to escape from money.
I guess since there is no escape, we do have to find a way to live with it. I hope this article will be a wake up call specially to many parents on how to bring up their children on the value of money.
It is not true that all kids that come from rich families are spoilt. Kids can easily pick up things whether it is bad or good and from everywhere, like how the parents, friends, teacher behave, what kind of movies the parents allow them to watch, how the parents and teacher teach them about money and etc. Of course it will be extremely hard to let the kids to realize what they are supposed to pick up from their surroundings because they are not mature enough to know. But I believe with hard work and determination, it can be easily achieved.
Money is not a bad nor good object, just like all sorts of jewelries but it is what we do with them that determines if it is good or bad. Like if you are donating tons of money to the orphanage or to the people in need then it is good; if you use tons of money to harm others then it is obviously bad.
Thank You Rinpoche for sharing this article, I have learnt from the discussion upon this article from last week’s YAK blog chat and also from the article itself.
Ultimately, money is just like a knife, it is neutral but entirely depend on our intentions and how we use it that turns it to a positive or negative element in our lives. Although there are many cases where parents just dump money on their children because they are too busy at work, but I have also seen a huge percentage of parents do the same to satisfy their own egos.
Today, it is not just wealthy families that have to worry about their offspring being complacent due to an easy life. But for many in the more developed countries or developing countries, life is generally easy or bearable, and even a middle income group of families need to be extra strict with their children if they do not want their children to fall into the ‘spoil brat’ category.
I found this article extremely interesting and educational. Not only is it educational for me, but for many others as well.
Throughout the article i couldn’t help but think about how i was brought up by my parents, and whether or not i was brought up in a good way or not. When i was younger i would normally get everything i wanted and more. I was spoiled in that way. My grandmother would always be too kind and get me expensive presents and i would love love love them. It was like this for quite some time. It was only until i got older, around 12 years old where i realised what i was doing was wrong. I should not always accept gifts from my grandmother like that. I should learn to say no to gifts. It was not good for me or for her. Occassionally i do accept gifts, but these days i rarely do. And i think this is because of my parents, who would always say i was being spoilt by my grandmother. Just thought i would share that in my comment.
I also would like to answer the question directly. Is Wealth Evil? No. Its not wealth that results in the negative uprising of a child. Its the parenting and surroundings that a child is put into. The first paragraph is a good example of this as Lee was a part of a rich family, yet she wasn’t brought up in a spoilt way. Therefore, money and wealth does not equal to spoilt kids or evil. It can, but its not all because of wealth.
Thank you Rinpoche for this post, which stresses all the points Rinpoche has always stressed about how parents should not spoil their children and how children, born with a silver spoon in their mouths, should use this ‘fortunate head-start of wealth’ wisely.
In fact,this post shows what wise parenting entails , especially when it comes to bringing up children and would-be inheritors of great wealth. Nonetheless, whether rich or poor, all have to be taught from young, the correct attitude towards money .”Money itself is neutral… it is what we do with it that determines whether it is positive or negative”.
People born to great wealth, have to be taught from young , how to value that wealth, recognizing that it didn’t just grow on the proverbial family tree in the first place They need to be taught limits of spending as well as learn to save for what they want. At the same time they need to be taught to appreciate and be grateful for the wealth they are receiving, by being exposed to how the less fortunate live their lives. Find them charitable causes and make sure they see the results of their “philanthropy”.
All this educating of the young is very important so that they don’t grow up to be spoilt adults and blow up the family fortunes, and fail miserably in life. “Cosseted offspring can lack the thrift, independence, ambition, persistence and entrepreneurial spirit that contributed to their parents’ success”.
Ultimately, it’s parents themselves who must impart to their offsprings these personal values and work ethics that had produced their “nest eggs in the first place”. Show them “how to consume wisely and the rewards of living on less” Be role models in this respect.
This article is a really well written article, it sums up pretty much everything on how to deal with giving kids the “spending power”.
As parents, it is their responsibility to teach their children when they are young to not spend recklessly and to learn to save money.
This knowledge will be more valuable rather than pampering their children with whatever they want because when they grow up and start working, they would already know how hard it is to earn money and why they should not give in to temptations but instead save the money because lets face it, we all won’t live forever and time will come when their parents would pass away, and when they do there would be no one to turn to if we overspend or etc.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this article!
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this article.
It serves as a very good reminder to parents and adults on how we want to perceive the importance and usage of money. I would think that money is not evil but the motivation of how we wanting the money and using it that determine the effect.
Most of the time we will chase for more and more money as it is our perception that it will bring happiness to our life. Not realising that it will only bring temporary happiness and more harm if we use it on wrong intention.
I hope this article will bring awareness not only to parents but everyone so we can change our preception and most importantly the motivation in using/sharing money and wealth.
Thx Rinpoche for sharing . I really agreed that money is just a piece of paper if we don’t make use if it. We should spend the money wisely like doing more charity and help those needed.Dont be “money slave” .Nowadays ,mostly younger generation really depends on parents to support everything.(especially those family with low birth rate).Parents should create more cause for their children like using their pocket money for charity.
When we passed away, money can’t bring along so we must know how to make use of money to help those needed and make this world better.
This article sums it up very well about the affects that wealth has on future generations. As the Chinese saying goes, the family wealth doesn’t last after the 3rd generation.
Rinpoche has also been teaching parents exactly what this article advises. Parents play such an important role in nurturing children because they are like sponges that absorb everything they see and hear. Whatever the parents focus and place importance on, is what the children will most likely follow and emulate when they grow up.
One aspect of the advise from both the article and Rinpoche that I feel is most important is that parents should be involved consistently in philanthropy and community service. This helps develop gratitude and kindness in children which are the 2 fundamental ingredients to being a decent person. Otherwise, they grow up totally self absorbed, ungrateful and unhappy, creating lots of drama for themselves and others around them.