What We Give Our Kids

I want to share a quote with you that I came across today. It made me laugh at first, but then it got me thinking.

I am heavily in debt. Right now my goal in life is to be just broke. I wanna get back to zero. Someday, I'm gonna have nothing. I'll leave it to my kids. "See this? None of this is all yours."

~ Tom Ryan

I guess it really caught my attention because my wife and I have been talking about debt and finances off and on all day now. Things are tight right now and I think it would be great to be back at zero, but I could never be content with that. I am running The Millionaire Marathon and I will have over $1,000,000 in my bank account when I am done. The great thing is that it is all being created out of absolutely nothing!

Once I have made my millions, I don't know that I want to leave it to my children when I leave this mortal plane. Money can really ruin people if you are not careful (just look at what it has done to Paris Hilton and many other celebrities). I think you should give your kids love, laughter and faith-building experiences, but, for their sakes, never give them money! Give them nothing and see what they do with it!

It always amazes me what my kids come up with in terms of ideas and imagination. But imagination and ingenuity are not highly valued skills in the scholastic system. Problem-solving is taught more as memorizing rules and steps to come to a pre-determined answer. if you get the same answer as the teacher, you get a good grade. If not, they flunk you.

Real life, unfortunately, is not so simple. A solution for one person may not be the solution for another. Life is full of variety and people who excel in life are those who use their imagination, creativity and ingenuity to do so. It is no wonder why Walt Disney's theme parks are such a big hit - it is based on imagination and engineering! Not bad for a guy who was fired from a newspaper job for lack of creativity and accused of having no original ideas.

So, parents, look for every opportunity to give your children nothing and challenge them to do something with it! You never know - they could become a Disney-like success some day!!!

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Creativity and imagination isn't just for kids, though. I am a firm believer in creative parenting solutions. I heard of a women who had more than enough of her kids running around and whooping it up inside the house. So she marched all of them outside and then threw 49 pennies out into the grass telling them that they were not to come back inside until they had found all 50!