What Financial Lessons Are You Teaching Your Children?

Some of my friends and I were sitting around talking about work, life, death and other journeys and one of the girlfriends shared that she was sick and tired of bailing her 29 year old daughter out of situations that could easily have been prevented. Seems like Baby Girl is charging her life away and is already in debt to the tune of $17k.

She asked our opinions on how to handle Baby Girl and we all agreed BG's old enough to 'do the time for committing the crime'. This means BG has to sink or swim on her own because if girlfriend fell dead tomorrow (God forbid), BG would find a way to get by without relying on her mother's help.

This conversation brought to mind some of the episodes we would get in the call centers-parents wanting to pay or take over their child's account. Some of these calls could be handled with ease because Buffy and Jody had opened the accounts on their own which made it impossible for us to discuss the accounts with mom and dad. Then there were the calls from you parents who demanded we discuss the accounts with us or you would escalate to a supervisor.

There was once a time I handled a call like this. The lady called wanting me to give her info on her daughter's account. I told her as politely as you can be when talking to a piece of brick that I would not give her the requested information unless her daughter was on the phone with us.

See, daughter had run up a balance on the account and had allowed it to go into collections and subsequently sold to a collection agency. Normal stuff-don't pay, go to collections and deal with them. Now Buffy's credit is being 'hit' by the outstanding account and mommy wants to pay the account off using her personal credit account IF (pay attention, here's the thick of the plot) we erase the negative history on Buffy's CBR. Three issues with this request, and why she screamed "Get your supervisor!" after I was unmoved by her threats and refused to do anything she wanted.

First, we couldn't transfer the balance because it's no longer our account so mommy and Buffy have to deal with the collection agency. Banks don't care about the account being paid because they've taken their losses when it was sold. Anytime you let an account be sold to a collection agency, you have no more bargaining power with the bank. They DON'T care about setting up payment plans, your going on Jay Leno to apologize, opening a full page ad in the Wall St. Journal begging and pleading, nothing. Call the agency and plead with them.

Second, nothing will make banks remove notes from a person's credit report unless it was their error or it's an act of Congress. You're sweating them, pleading, whining neither cancellation of the account will work. Buffy was warned this would happen. She should have told mommy to help out a lot earlier.

Third, this is the reason your kids shouldn't do crack! What are you teaching your children? Are you teaching them that they have to be financially responsible and take care of their credit because poor credit will effect future employment? Car insurance? Medical assistance? Finding a mate (read if you can only afford Denny's, you'll never meet the Ruth's Chris' crowd)? Higher education? Renting or buying a home? Finding a good, reliable automobile?

Teach your children that if they can't afford it now, put it in layaway or save until you're able to afford it. Credit is now as precious as virginity only unlike virginity, credit can become new after 10 long years.

And parents, when you call in trying to help your kids, have the kid on the phone with you and make sure you tell Buffy and Jody that this will be the absolute last time you go in your pockets to save them. Teach them parents, teach them!