Monique said:
Aren't you worried that letting your daughter consume so much will make her prone to putting herself in debt when living on her own?
You'd have to know her to understand that she "gets it". She knows that her ability right now to afford things is a temporary luxury. She'd rather eat at Taco Bell every night and spend $3.99 for the #5 meal deal. I am the one that prefers her to get a decent meal at least once a day. I guess I didn't make that clear. Of course that doesn't always happen, she will eat junk or skip meals, which is why I have a low monthly range of $600.
She does love to buy clothes though. The thing is, if I tell her to stop spending, she does. Honestly she's drastically cut back over the past year.
She's not an airhead that can't understand money or living on a budget. I was more concerned about her older sister that lived with her father. He is an idiot when it comes to money. He has always spent beyond his means, he always buys the most expensive items, eats at lavish restaurants, at one time he had 27 briefcases that cost $600 each on average. He has an entire dresser full of expensive watches, I lost count of them, they're like candy to him. Same thing with sunglasses. He'd buy a $200 pair of non-prescription designer sunglasses, go to lunch, leave them at the restaurant, decide it's not worth his time to go get them and just buy another pair. This happened ALL OF THE TIME. He would do things like buy a cd player (back when they were a couple of hundred dollars), decide he didn't want it and put it in the trash. I got it out of the trash because it hadn't even been taken out of the box yet. He saw me bring it into the house and he got furious, telling me to throw it back out because he didn't want that style, he was going to buy another. I told him to take it back to the store and exchange it. He said that was too much trouble to go through an exchange. I said I'd take it back and we got into a terrible argument.
When I threw him out, he had racked up over $292,000 in CREDIT CARD debt alone, that's more than some people's mortgages. At 18-23% interest, I figured Mars would be colonized before he could pay them off. I told him he needed professional help.
My older daughter learned quickly that when you support yourself you need to have a budget, and she has adapted even though she lived with him for several years. She learned it the hard way, the first couple of months she ran out of money before the end of the month and had no money for food. She also lived for almost a year on ramen noodles. Hey, I love ramen noodles.
My younger daughter that lives with me
likes to buy things, but she doesn't
have to buy things. She understands budgets and bills. I pay cash for everything, unfortunately you need credit cards for hotels and rental cars.
My younger daughter knows that when she goes off to college, no more shopping. A couple of months ago she came to me with a complete list of her anticipated expenses, she had checked into tuition for the schools she wants to attend, costs of books, boarding, etc... to see if it was acceptable. She's a good kid. I keep telling her that she needs to make LOTS of money when she grows up because she will be supporting me when I get old.
Monique, your parents let you pay them? Can I adopt you?
Did you tell them that if they were wearing cheap shoes, maybe they really were the one who needed the job? How can you tell anyway? Shoes are shoes. Besides, the fancier the shoes, the less comfortable they are. Bah, I can do without that!
I guess I haven't either. Who are Joan and David?
I pay more per month in repairs than my mortgage payment. I'm slowly and painfully replacing every square inch of this HELL HOLE.
