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    The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money
    The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money
    The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money

    Written by Ron Lieber

    Narrated by Ron Lieber

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    New York Times Bestseller

    “We all want to raise children with good values—children who are the opposite of spoiled—yet we often neglect to talk to our children about money. . . . From handling the tooth fairy, to tips on allowance, chores, charity, checking accounts, and part-time jobs, this engaging and important book is a must-read for parents.” — Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project

    In the spirit of Wendy Mogel’s The Blessing of a Skinned Knee and Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman’s Nurture Shock, New York Times “Your Money” columnist Ron Lieber delivers a taboo-shattering manifesto that explains how talking openly to children about money can help parents raise modest, patient, grounded young adults who are financially wise beyond their years.

    For Ron Lieber, a personal finance columnist and father, good parenting means talking about money with our kids. Children are hyper-aware of money, and they have scores of questions about its nuances. But when parents shy away from the topic, they lose a tremendous opportunity—not just to model the basic financial behaviors that are increasingly important for young adults but also to imprint lessons about what the family truly values.

    Written in a warm, accessible voice, grounded in real-world experience and stories from families with a range of incomes, The Opposite of Spoiled is both a practical guidebook and a values-based philosophy. The foundation of the book is a detailed blueprint for the best ways to handle the basics: the tooth fairy, allowance, chores, charity, saving, birthdays, holidays, cell phones, checking accounts, clothing, cars, part-time jobs, and college tuition. It identifies a set of traits and virtues that embody the opposite of spoiled, and shares how to embrace the topic of money to help parents raise kids who are more generous and less materialistic.

    But The Opposite of Spoiled is also a promise to our kids that we will make them better with money than we are. It is for all of the parents who know that honest conversations about money with their curious children can help them become more patient and prudent, but who don’t know how and when to start.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 3, 2015
    ISBN9780062372444
    Author

    Ron Lieber

    Ron Lieber is the author of The Opposite of Spoiled and is the Your Money columnist for the New York Times. Three of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, and he is a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award, business journalism’s highest honor. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, and their two daughters.

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    Reviews for The Opposite of Spoiled

    4.5/5

    41 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The Opposite of Spoiled by Ron LieberI was tipped off to this book by a fellow soccer parent. I finished it over the weekend and have found myself bringing up the book in conversations and thinking about it frequently.Lieber, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote the book in an effort to improve the conversation about the financial education of children and to tackle the issue of children growing up privileged and lacking empathy for those who do not. It is evident that parts of the book are driven by conversations he has had raising his own daughter.Lieber notes, probably correctly, that most of the audience for his book earns more money than the average American. He then points out that the median income in the United States is around $50,000.00 per year and that anyone making $75,000 to $100,000 a year is affluent. He goes on to note that most Americans who fall within these income brackets do not consider themselves affluent and typically describe themselves as middle class. He also acknowledges that many in these income brackets can compare themselves to their peers or to the top 1% and feel that they are not successful because of social stratification, i.e. people often will have little to no interaction with individuals in lower economic groups and thus little frame of reference to appreciate their relative fortune.Not surprisingly, I fit into Lieber's target audience and, as I am in the process of raising three children, I am sensitive to the concern that my children will grow up entitled and with a lack of empathy for those less fortunate. Lieber does not offer a prescriptive method for teaching children about money. Rather, he offers a series of anecdotes about strategies employed by other parents and then breaks down the logic behind some of those strategies. The closest that Lieber comes to an actual prescription is when he discusses allowances. Essentially, Lieber contends that an allowance is a tool for teaching children the value of money, of saving, and giving. As such, he contends that it should not be tied to chores such as making a bed or cleaning a room. Rather, he says that the chores that allow for the functioning of a household should be expectations and not compensated.Lieber also argues for designating money into three categories: savings, spending and giving. He then talks about working with children to decide where to direct their giving, limits to put on their spending, etc. For the most part, Lieber advocates giving children a great deal of latitude in making these choices. Lieber goes into a number of other topics dealing with money. Issues like talking to children about homelessness, the value of overseas mission trips, how to answer questions about the possessions of their peers, etc. I found most of it be helpful or at least thought provoking. If there is a complaint it is that the book does not offer as much "try this" advice as I would have liked. Occasionally, this left me thinking that Lieber had identified a problem that I might not have recognized but then left me to cope with it on my own. That said, it is a minor complaint.The Opposite of Spoiled is a thought provoking book, albeit one aimed at a specific audience. It remains to be seen whether I will have any success in putting any of his ideas into practice but I plan on trying.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      very good
    • 4/5
      Yes! Finally someone who puts onto words the reasons I am very uncomfortable with voluntourism. Besides this, there were many eye opening sections. My children are young and I appreciated the many ways to have conversations about money with them. The author uses examples of many different kinds of families and I think while many situations might seem extreme or foreign to the average reader, there will probably be at least one story that hits home.

      While the book seems aimed at the upper class, most people living in America with electricity, clean water, and free public education need to remember that they are rich compared to a majority of the world's population. So many parents could use the advice to have conversations about needs versus wants, and about answering questions about the costs of things and each family's priorities in spending, saving and giving.

      I do think the book could have been even better with some more grounding in psychology and sociology research. Some studies are referred to but a few times the author makes broad sweeping statements about the nature of children without anything to back it up and made my footnote-loving self cringe. But overall, the book is not a scholarly examination of human nature and economics but that's ok. It is a big bag of compelling stories, intriguing questions, and tricks to try.
    • 4/5
      The central piece of advice from Ron Lieber's The Opposite of Spoiled is one I intend to try out on my own kids: Introduce an allowance early on, in incremental amounts, and then maintain it independent of routine chores. In other words, I'm not planning to use it to bribe them to do everyday household tasks. Some won't agree and that's fine. I think there's wiggle room here in order to best teach kids about money while they have limited means to earn their own. The part about allowing kids to spend their own fun money on (almost) whatever they want is one of the best ideas in the book. I'm eager to see how that principle works in reality.The rest of the book is take-it-or-leave-it. You will notice throughout that, whether the author sees it this way or not, his target audience is the upper middle class family. Mr. Lieber is at least aware of this charge because he shares an exchange he had with a woman from a lower income family who described his plan as "a conceit of the rich." I see her point, but there's still plenty of useful information to borrow.
    • 4/5
      good