| Relationships: Father-son The pesky father: Thriftiness "What's your problem? Chong has his savings and is not asking you for money to buy the flip cover for the Ericsson mobile phone" The Ericsson handphone has a cover which protects the keys from being accidentally pressed. This cover, at least in older models, has weak joints and if the phone has been dropped, the cover becomes loose or just breaks away. In Chong's case, the cover was still functional although it was loose. Mum finds it very irritating that there has been so much control over her growing son, her protector and feels it. The young man, now aged 13 years old should be able to spend on what he likes. Overriding father's objections, he bought a Discman which got lost after a while and a Playstation which took up so much of his time that his study was neglected. The Game Boy was surreptitiously played, hoping that the pesky father would not discover it. It is hard work to instill thriftiness in a world where there are so many gadgets to encourage spending and especially if mum is always on the defence. Unfortunately, in a family with no worries about having the next meal and with the growing children not exposed to hungry street kids (none could be found in Singapore), it is extremely difficult to teach frugality. The careful management of one's money or resources is a boring subject to most people. When they are adults, they start to splurge on a car and over $80,000 renovations for the new HDB apartment. When they run out of money, they have to beg, steal, embezzle company's money, hustle or borrow. More sophisticated ones give post-dated cheques to get temporary loans from friends. Such cheques bounce. For sons, it may be more important in the context of the modern Singapore where "the quality of life" is important. There are many highly educated wives who don't work after a while, reasons being to look after the young children, not trusting the maid to do such an important task or just to get out from the rat race, to smell the roses. If Chong grows up and he is the sole bread winner, he will end up being unable to manage his money if he has not been taught how to do it. There is no need to imagine the financial worries affecting the whole family. Every parent hopes that their child will earn more than sufficient to provide for a family, but life is going to be very hard for the next generation if they are not employees of sound companies. "What's your problem, daddy?" There is no need to replace the flip cover as it is still doing its job and the money to be spent in buying this cover would be better in buying a book to read. "Well, you said we could save money by borrowing books from the library?" said Chong. You are right son. But if you have to throw money, it is best to acquire intellectual knowledge from a good book rather than a new flip cover for your handphone, the cost of which is paid for by daddy out of his hard work. Dad is a salesman and you can see that it is hard to earn money from sales. Did he feel like buying the cover after the explanation? Fortunately, he understands the meaning of thriftiness, a most boring subject to discuss, let alone to teach at schools and homes. Family Relationships is sponsored by asiahomes.com Send mail to david@asiahomes.com with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 2000 Asia USA Realty (Singapore) asiahomes.com Pte Ltd
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