Are you honest with your children about your money situation?

[Purpleandgreenyarn]

Hello

I just wanted to post to ask your thoughts on money and what or if you share your situation with your children.

For context;
My children are 9&4.
Im self employed and earn around £46k after tax. My husband is working, however, and this is where it gets complex, it’s a small start up and he gets paid infrequently and very little. For the past 24 months, we have mostly been living on my income. From time to time, he will be paid a tiny lump sum, but this is just as and when the money is available. This year, he was paid £5,000. Last year it was around £7,000.
So as you can imagine, we are not rolling in it, so to speak. Without completely outing ourselves, I do have a genuine reason to believe this will change. The buisness has been approached by a large conglomerate to work in collaboration on a product, contracts have been signed and the item is being produced, so I have every reason to believe that my husbands wage will increase over the next year.

Money has always been tight, my family had very little and my dad was always quite bad with money. He died many years ago but whilst I was at university he would ask me for my student loan, promising to pay back but never did. This left me getting into credit card debt and I ended up making very stupid financial decisions myself. It took me a while to get out of it, but part of that for me was getting over the shame of saying, I can’t afford it. Fast forward 15 or so years and I am in the black, no credit cards/student loans/overdrafts/loan/store cards at all, and I am saving towards a deposit for a home. However it will most likely be a flat on a shared ownership type scheme (I know they aren’t great but my only option realistically).

To get to the issue, my daughter has been saying she would like her own bedroom, she would like a house with a garden and she has lots of plans about furniture and decoration. To begin with I sort of idly and in a very non committal way would say oh wouldn’t that be lovely, maybe one day, so on and so on. But now it’s gotten to the point that I have started to say outright, I don’t think I can afford that. More recently she has been asking to join her friend in Piano and Karate lessons, but I just don’t have the money, so I was honest and said I won’t be able to afford that. She also mentioned over the summer how we didn’t have a holiday. Obviously it’s that time of year when kids are talking about what they would like for Christmas. I don’t want to create a bleak picture, because they will get what they ask for, clothes, books, craft supplies, and toys, but high ticket items are a no (and I think they would be even if I had lots of money). We go out for lunch as a family once a month, and again once a month we will go to the cinema, they have clothes and shoes when they need them and I tend to buy new, so I really believe that they are lucky on many fronts.
However my husband is taking umbrage with me saying to our daughter that we can’t afford things when she asks, he said he is over hearing her bringing it up with her friends and making herself sound like Oliver Twist. I appreciate we both have our own perspectives that may make seeing the situation clearly difficult, so I just wandered, what do you say to your children when they discuss things that are just not affordable to you? Are you honest? I don’t think she is at an age where I can distract her or try wriggle out of answering as she is nearly 10. Any advice/insights gratefully received.

cheers

You think her DH is setting up the next amazon or apple 🤣🤦🏻‍♀️ I doubt it!

Yes I always tell my daughter if I can't afford to buy someting

9 and 4 they can enjoy simpler things. I really value activities out of school for learning new skills.

@snowlaser After two years the business should be more stable. It just sounds and to mouth and it’s heaping pressure on the OP. He does need to evaluate where it’s going for this time investment and saying ‘no’
to reasonable requests from DC. 12 hours a day for 6 days a week for next to nothing isn’t a greedy business. So he needs a truthful evaluation of time and effort vs earnings.

Should read: it just sounds hand to mouth …

I don't recall doing it at those ages, I think I tried to avoid 'we can't afford it' and used 'do you want to put that on your wish list?' with littles, adding on 'your father and I can see what we can budget for' around 9ish, but I can see why you're doing that though with the questions she's asking though.

I started to include them in more budget conversations as teens once they get their own bank account (I help them set one up when they're 13) and fairly open with my older kids.

And I agree with others than he's probably a bit sensitive about the business, and if possible getting another perspective on it - at that level, he's likely still quality for free advice from a local chambers of commerce.

Of course I'm not saying that - but I am saying even the most profitable businesses ever created had lean early years, so it's pretty normal for any start up to do so.

working 70 hours a week and earning less than 1k a month is a joke, not lean years! I know people who set up a business who initially had a low salary but 2 years in this seems unsustainable to me. Especially as they can’t afford for their kids to do sports or music.

My dd sometimes points out that her best friend gets more pocket money, has been to Disneyland, has lots of holidays and lots of toys.
I am honest. I say that we have everything we need, and more. We have one more child in our family so our lives are different. There is less money to go around, but we really don't need all the things her friend has.
I try to explain that all parents earn different amounts, some have family money, some are single parents, some are only children. We can't all do the same things, but we don't need to.
In the grand scheme of things, my dd is very lucky, and I think she knows it. She is 8.

There’s always someone who has more. Dc have to navigate the world knowing this. The OP here is putting up with a lot though. There needs to be an agreed end point regarding DHs lack of earnings. It just sounds like an indulgence at the moment, especially as earning little takes 70 hours a week!

If your husband's job is paying so poorly, could he take a side job to supplement his income until it's a realistic one.

Or rather - do the "business" as the side job!

Explaining to children where money comes from (ie by earning it) is as important as explaining that you can't afford things.

If your husband earned £46k per year as you do OP your children would have holidays and clubs.

Childhood is so short. He is wasting their opportunities to try new things and have new experiences by earning so little. I would find this extremely difficult to tolerate.

When they were that age, I was being fleeced by family court proceedings. Despite having a good full time job, there were days when I could only feed the children, I pretended I'd eaten at work. I didn't tell them a word.

Now they are older, I'm self employed and I'm much more honest. I'll say "when x pays me, you can have it" or "I haven't earned enough this term". But it's easier knowing that I can give them what they want (within sensible reasons!) when it's the right time.

I echo the bills vs fun money comment. Also, could you say something like we can't afford it at the moment because Dad is building a business and explaining what that entails? You can be positive that way and say how proud you are of him and that means your money is mostly taken up by essentials as you're working as a team. I think there's a way to have this conversation positively and it's good to make sure children know that money has to be earned and prioritised. I hope your husband's business gets the breakthrough he's working for.

We are unfortunately genuinely poor at the moment, I try and phrase it the other way.
How lucky we are that we have a roof over our heads, food to eat, we are healthy and happy and have a household full of love. Cringey, but I think it’s important to acknowledge what we have instead of making them feel hard done by, by pushing that we can’t always afford things.
I think it’s good to be honest but it’s how you frame it, as you do have a good income so aren’t actually poor don’t emphasise that too much.
I’m sure they will have friends in school who genuinely have way less. I think it’s important that they are grateful and realise their relative privilege, but understand that money is finite and bills need to be paid so mum and dad have to make decisions on what the money is spent on.
If we can’t afford something I am honest and say so, but I try not to make a big deal out of it, for example ds would absolutely love a Nintendo switch and we would love to be able to get him one, but it’s just not at all doable. However, he will get presents of course (mostly second hand bits to be honest- a bike, superhero figures, a remote control car etc) as well as a small new Lego set and he will be grateful and feel very spoilt.

Me too have financial problems 😥 but don't stress it will get better

I have always been honest and if I don't think we can afford something I say so. One of DS's friends has a huge house and he was asking when we can get a bigger house - I told him frankly probably never because that's really expensive and we don't have that money.

However, you're problem is different I think. Your DH is sensitive because he is hardly earning anything. Personally I'd be asking to see his business plan that shows when he is going to earn, say 50k, a year and what has to happen to make that real. Perhaps he should go back to paid employment if that isn't on the cards in the next 2 years.

Yes, I'll always say if something is too expensive or we'll need to wait until payday/save up for it etc.

That said, I'm surprised you can't afford piano lessons on that salary? Bigger house is obviously more complicated.

My DM always said we were “lucky” because you couldn’t get oranges and bananas in the Second World War. So yes, we had food. However I was totally sick of this mantra by the age of 10. I didn’t feel lucky with hardly any new clothes, no holidays (ever), a bedroom with ice on the inside of the windows, no bathroom and an outside loo! How lucky was I? Not very. However it spurred me on to get a good job, move out for better living conditions and have loads of clothes! Telling dc they are lucky to have fuck all is being economical with the truth but they might be motivated to do well for themselves. That’s about the only benefit.

The startup business (is it still startup after 2 years or failure to launch?) means that DCs are missing out twice over:

1. Reducing the household income. IMO this is less important if all needs are met.
2. DF being absent 10 hours per day 7/7

IMO the second one is more important and means the DCs are missing out on having a relationship with their DF.

With us it was about balance.
We took the kids out to eat but told them no pudding and tap water or we would only be able to eat out less often if they wanted expensive drinks and puds. They chose to eat out more often and have water.

We took them to the park on Saturday afternoons and said choose between ice cream from the ice cream the van one a month or every week from the supermarket over the road. We had supermarket ice cream every week.

Same with sweets and chocolate. More often but cheaper or branded but less. They soon learn to spend their treats budget wisely!

However my husband is taking umbrage with me saying to our daughter that we can’t afford things when she asks, he said he is over hearing her bringing it up with her friends and making herself sound like Oliver Twist.

In this situation I think you need to talk to your daughter again and explain that just because you can't afford certain things, doesn't mean you are in poverty.

It's good to be (relatively) honest with kids about finances. It doesn't do anyone any favours to pretend you are wealthier than you are, and kids are perfectly capable of understanding certain things about money and the way the world works, especially by 9 years old.

But it does sound like your daughter has got the wrong end of the stick and maybe thinks you are worse off than you actually are.

You don't need to show her the figures, but you can reassure her that you have plenty compared to some other people in the country, that she has plenty to eat and a roof over her head etc., but sometimes the 'luxuries' in life are harder to afford, and lots of other people are in a similar situation.