This article is a crowd pleaser. Robert Frank attended a summer camp for rich kids that was specifically created to teach the children of rich people how to manage money so that they don’t just blow it all. It’s interesting to read some of Frank’s observations about these people who are mostly in their twenties:
“When I got to the Skills Retreat, I thought it would confirm my worst fears about growing inequality. Here was a camp designed specifically to help rich kids get richer (or at least, keep them from getting poorer). It was yet another way for the children of wealth to get a leg up on members of the middle class, who can’t afford financial education camps and won’t have big inheritances to carry them through life.
Yet after two days, I realized I was wrong. Today’s rich kids may be cash-rich, but many are skills-poor, with little chance of growing their wealth or landing top jobs. Raised in a bubble of privilege and insulated from the competitive pressures of the everyday world, many tend to have low self-confidence, little drive and few of the necessary tools to succeed in today’s global economy. Only a few of the kids, for instance, could explain the difference between a stock and a mutual fund.
In the end, I concluded that these kids wouldn’t be tomorrow’s chief executives and billionaire entrepreneurs. Most would probably drift through life spending their parents’ money and hoping it would last. Tomorrow’s economic superstars will more likely come from the striving middle class, just as they have for much of American history.
And all that inherited wealth will wind up going to people who actually earned it — an encouraging sign for those of us worried about the wealth gap.”
Read the rest of the article. It’s a great read.
That was a good read. It reminds me of one of my friends. I want to almost bet that he will never learn the importance of money.
Rich or poor – I think it’s just a generational thing. Even if you don’t have money, you still have a warped sense of its worth. We’re so obsessed with what we want and what we’re told we need, that rich or poor, we sacrifice common sense for what is hip and happening.