Lies Poor Parents Tell Their Kids – Being a parent is one of the toughest jobs in the world. And when your family is living in poverty, the job gets even tougher. This is why parents will tell their kids all sorts of things even if they are far from the truth. If you’re curious to find out some of the absurd lies poor parents tell their kids? Then stick around as we’ll be looking into 10 lies your parents might have told you.
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10 Lies Poor Parents Tell Their Kids
1. Lowering expenses will increase your money
Poor parents teach their kids to lower their expenses while the rich focus on increasing their income. Let’s face it, a lot of parents may shun the idea of takeout and insist on having food from home because they want to save some money. Most parents instill this bad mentality that you should always save the last coin. They focus on lowering expenses as much as possible to the point that life isn’t almost worth living. If you think about it, do you think the rich care about not buying a $5 coffee from Starbucks or spending $30 on a movie?
Poor parents will always make you feel like a villain for wanting expensive things. Before you try to call these kids spoilt, remember that wealthy parents put all their attention into increasing the amount of money flowing in. If you radically increase your income, there’s always going to be large amounts of cash left at the end of the month. This doesn’t mean you go about toiling 24/7 either. The smarter you are from a financial perspective, the least effort you have to deploy into the real world. That’s why Wall Street brokers earn so much more than miners. And who between these two do you think deploys more effort?
2. Misfortunes are brought by the lack of money
The song will go on and on, that money is the root of all evil. But if you sat and looked back, who sang this song? Someone who had the money or someone barely making ends meet? The reality is that, the person saying this is nowhere near the success pot. Neither are they happy about their current financial situation. This applies to poor parents who are constantly teaching their kids that money is the root of all evil. This creates the notion that their misfortunes are brought about by the lack of money in their lives and attributes an element of negativity to the concept of money. This is such a shallow narrative because, even with all the money in the world, not all problems can be solved.
Research shows that even when poor people get the money, it leads to more and more problems that they don’t know how to tackle. Worse yet, mismanagement and abuse may lead them to deeper black holes. The lack of money also leads to some tacky misfortunes, so you do need money in your life for some comfort. The rich understand this, that is why they merely use it as a tool to help them navigate to the next level. They treat money more like a partner and not a savior.
It’s just pieces of paper & plastic with drawings on them which we exchange for material value. Nothing less, nothing more. Parents need to stop taking money so damn personal and use it for what it was created for. Exchange it to make your life better. It’s super similar to scissors. You can cut hair with them, or you can stab yourself in the eye. Why people choose to do the latter is a major mystery to us.
3. Talking to someone about your financial situation is shameful
Explaining to your kids why your financial situation is as terrible as it looks is important. However, poor parents teach their kids that it is shameful to talk about finances with other people especially because they come from a less-privileged background. They would condone the kids sharing with their friends about the real situation at home to avoid neighbors getting in their business or being judged. They forget that this instills certain negative traits in kids.
Financial literacy is very important and learning the basics from home is a great kickstart. The kid can maybe learn from her past mistakes and make some sober decisions along the way. The vast majority of the poor never talk about money at home, it’s usually a secret how much money the parents earn or how that money is spent.
The only time the kids hear about money is when the parents are arguing about not having enough, thus associating the entire concept with a negative feeling. On the other hand, rich parents usually make it a priority to talk about the value and importance of money in their household, as soon as possible. This familiarizes kids from a young age with the concept of value in exchange for services provided. They’re introduced to the household expenses and put in real-life situations where they figure out pretty quickly that, money is a lot harder to earn than it seems.
4. The work of your hands will make you rich
If anything, poor parent will tell their kids that the work of their hands will make them rich. It will also make them extremely tired and unmotivated along the way because hand-to-mouth labor gets monotonous over time. There is a huge difference between getting rich and getting paid and that is where the rich parents come in. They teach their children the fundamental difference between the two.
For example, a majority of poor people get paid to take care of something someone needs to be done. Simple tasks such as washing a car, answering phone calls, etc. These are single activity jobs where you do the same thing over and over again. Once you teach your child that they need to use their hands to make money, you are limiting the possibilities of becoming the next Elon Musk. One common trait about the rich is that they never do repetitive work. This is because it’s easily outsourced and instead focuses on the main problem. They always seem to try to fix a BIG problem, it’s as if it is synonymous with getting rich.
That’s how, delivering the newspaper became content websites, same result, less hassle. Answering the phone (became automated messaging) speaking of which, Google’s new AI is a gamechanger for virtual assisting. Let’s take 3 Iconic modern entrepreneurs: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. They all got super-rich by solving problems for humanity and creating products and services to serve that mission. People will pay money for you to solve their problems. Teach your children that, and they’re off to the races!
5. School is the only key to success
Poor parents telling their kids that school is the only key to success is absurd. This is something we shouldn’t hear a 21st-century parent telling their kids. Studies have shown that there is a decline in the number of people enrolling in schools, especially universities. Except for highly skilled careers such as medicine, law, and engineering, degrees are becoming more and more useless, and people are instead starting to follow their passions. Poor parents have a habit of pressuring kids to score well at school and treat schoolwork as their first-class ticket to riches when in reality it’s not.
Some degrees are obsolete while dropouts are running big brands like Apple. This belief that life is a linear path from elementary, middle, and high, then college needs to stop. Some certifications can help along the way but are never a requirement when it comes to success. Look at the Tiktokers earning millions, yet some are still in high school or better yet, dropouts! So, before you drown your kids in books, also try and figure out their talents and equip them with life skills that will provide more value, other than just a traditional schooling education.
6. Luxury items are a waste of money and resources
If you come from a poor family, chances are that the parents are keen on what and how the money is spent around the household. Poor parents are always complaining about what items deserve to be bought for the home and how much is to be spent on each. Luxury items never seem to make it to the shopping list. Not only that, the household is usually maintained using the basics. Luxuries such as air conditioning are something a poor parent would never consider. Also, poor parents teach their kids how to ration, they know how much a commodity can last in a month up to the last drop. Something a cheapskate would do in my opinion but hey, parenting 101.
7. Working hard will make you rich
Poor parents always tell their kids to work hard. However, don’t work for money, have money work for you! I cannot insist enough on why working for your sweat is not the secret to a successful future. Poor parents are always forcing their kids to work hard, a narrative that seems to be outdated. If it meant so much, then factory workers would be earning more than forex traders.
Poor people have a bad tendency of exchanging their time for money. You can read as many books as you’d like, go to seminars, classes, MBAs, whatever you want, it’s all based on this. You will find that the rich use the money they get to create more money. Most people stay poor because they believe you need to work hands-on or get large amounts of money to invest, otherwise, there’s no point. The rich, are always looking for a way to add the smallest drop in the bucket of passive income they can find because it’s not about the amount as much as it is about freeing your time. The rich believe that the purpose of money is to buy back your time. And then taking that time and spending it on the things that matter most.
8. Money is everything
Remember earlier when we mentioned that the poor treat money as their solution to everything? Well, it takes more than money to build yourself, something all parents need to tell their kids. You could have all the money in the world and not know how to live a full life. Also, if you lack the money that makes you ‘something’ you end up living your whole life feeling like a failure because you aren’t swimming in dollars. There is a quote that says, “Invest in yourself, it pays the best dividends!” It has a lot more to do with increasing how valuable you are to the world.
The world rewards people who are valuable because valuable people can create value for others and in exchange for that value, they can get whatever they want. The concept of becoming a valuable person is not taught to their children by the poor, even just a few of the wealthy bring it up when the child is growing up, but those who do see a higher probability of both success and happiness. There are many ways you can teach your kids to be valuable as they are, or as they become adults. Embrace their talents and support their innovation. They may create a product or service that people use. The only way to become more valuable is through the increase of knowledge, skill level, and time. Ideally, teach your kids that the more valuable you are, the richer you will be!
9. Allowance is for rich kids
Poor parents barely have enough to get by so, where on earth do they get the extra money to give their kids an allowance? Poor parents have taught their kids that they do not deserve an allowance, and if they do get some monetary compilation, it will only come once they have completed some chores or done some extra work to earn the right to some pocket money. Poor parents have lied to their kids that allowance is for rich kids with trust funds.
10. Cheap food is good food
Poor parents hardly consider nutrition when feeding their kids as long as they’ve put food on the table. They will lie to their children about how basic foods such as unflavored steel-cut oats is great for their health when in reality it is all they could afford and have no choice but to eat it because it’s available.
They also have a fast-food culture that teaches kids that cheap fast food is a great alternative to healthy green alternatives. Rich parents are mostly keen on diet and will go the extra mile to seek and consult a nutritionist. This list just covers some of the common lies we know. If you want to get a more in-depth knowledge of the beliefs between poor parents and rich parents, I suggest you give RICH DAD POOR DAD by Robert Kiyosaki a read.
