It’s the true story of a young newlywed couple who has been married for less than two years, has no debt and has $50,000 in savings, all due to their joint effort to manage their money responsibly.
He has a college degree, and she has a one-year technical degree. Both worked their way through college and graduated without debt. Their goals for the future include a large family, a paid-off house and ample donations to missions. What a great example for all young people!
Money Matters is published by Crown Financial Ministries, the organization that Larry Burkett helped start. Listening to Larry Burkett’s Christian financial radio show helped encourage my husband and me as we worked toward becoming completely debt-free, a goal we achieved (not on our own, only with God’s help!) in 2002. Do check out Crown’s sitewhile you’re there.
This flies in the face of the common wisdom of the past 50 years that said you must have a college degree in order to get a decent job. That’s true in some career fields (who wants to be the patient of a neurosurgeon who hasn’t gone through college and medical school?) but it’s certainly not true for all fields.
The U.S. government makes projections about the growth (or lack of growth) in different career areas. You can find those numbers at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) website. Here’s the latest BLS projection of above average growth and above average wage occupations. It’s an interesting document. Note that the projected increases in job growth are for a ten-year period (2006-2016).
When reading it, keep in mind that a high percentage increase in a given career field doesn’t necessarily translate into a lot of jobs. Check the “Employment” column on the left side of the page for actual numbers (in the thousands).
For example, on the first page you’ll see that the rate of increase for “aircraft cargo handling supervisors” is a healthy 23.3%. But that only equals 1,000 new jobs over the next ten years. Not exactly a booming career field in a country of over 300 million people.
On the other hand, note that while the BLS projects there will only be 10.4% more truck drivers needed over the next ten years, that’s the equivalent of 193,000 new jobs.
Once you become familiar with the chart layout, note the “source of training” column on the right side of the page. Most of the jobs on the first few pages do not require a bachelor’s degree. As you go through the document, you’ll find more jobs that do require at least a four-year degree. There are quite a few.
However, only a few of them show the highest growth potential in both percentages and numbers. They include a variety of tech careers, social workers, jobs in education, and accountants. For those willing to earn more than just a bachelor’s degree, a career as a pharmacist, physician or surgeon would certainly be a growth area to consider.
Still, most of the above average growth jobs that require bachelor’s degrees don’t equal many jobs. For example, only 100 jobs per year nationwide are expected to open up for archivists, anthropologists and archaeologists, marine engineers and naval architects, and atmospheric and space scientists. So unless your child passionately desires to become one of those professionals, you might want to gently point him or her in another direction.
Since many of the degree-required careers have such low projected job numbers, today’s parents have to think seriously about whether a degree is even worth it, particularly if their children’s interests and abilities don’t necessarily fit with the jobs with the most openings and growth in the future.
Again, colleges and universities will not tell you that the degrees they offer do not necessarily translate into good jobs, especially in the working world of the 21st century. This is one area where parents and their teens really have to do the homework for themselves.
If the name “Jaycee Dugard” sounds familiar to you, it’s because it was all over the news a while back when Jaycee was found and rescued 18 years after being kidnapped when she was 11 years old.
Her kidnapper, a convicted sex offender, held her hostage all those years and also fathered two children by her. They are now 11 and 15 years old; they grew up believing Jaycee was their sister, not knowing she was actually their mother.
Jaycee’s strength and determination to care for her daughters as best she could has filled the family with admiration.
Both Angel and Starlit appear to have been educated solely by their mother – who herself never made it past the fifth grade.
Yet recent tests show Angel, 15, functioning close to the level of a high school senior – that is, a higher level than Jaycee was at when she was abducted.
Both girls are now receiving tutoring at the northern California home.
Now that’s what I call successfully homeschooling in adverse conditions, and it’s just more proof that homeschooling works.
It’s become an expectation in our society that most everyone, homeschooled or not, literate or not, will attend college. Whether a young person’s bent leans toward book-learning or engine-rebuilding doesn’t seem to matter. The important thing, we’re told, is that they go to college.
There’s an entire empire based on helping parents and teachers help students get into college. There are books and classes available, professional help can be hired to lead you through the application process….it’s a huge industry in itself.
But there are a few dirty little secrets about college. One in particular is purposely suppressed by colleges and universities. For all the fuss about getting into a good college, for all the money that’s saved up from the time the student is a toddler, for all the home equity lines parents must tap into, the fact is that only half of all college students actually graduate! And this is nothing new; it’s been true for 30 years.
(I worked in my college dorm office in the late 1970s. I vividly recall that officials overbooked all of the dorms at the large university I attended because they knew students would begin dropping out the first week. They didn’t want to end up with empty rooms.)
There are many reasons for such a high college dropout rate, the primary ones being that students can’t hack it or can’t afford it. But the bottom line is, half of all students don’t make it through college.
Of course, when a student drops out of college, he still has to pay for the time he was there. If he borrowed money to pay tuition and room-and-board (increasingly likely), that money has to be repaid with interest. So while he doesn’t leave with a diploma, he may well leave with a parting gift (as the old tv game show hosts used to call the loser’s consolation prize) of years of debt burden.
College brochures and websites are slick and packed with information, but they sure don’t mention that high dropout rate, do they?
We visited our hometown over the weekend and noticed that a couple of businesses we always shopped at have closed down. I looked them up online when I got home and found that they went out of business because of the bad economy.
One store owner, who ran a wonderful Christian book/gift store, blamed her business closing on people no longer using their credit cards. She said that in the past, people bought more items and paid with credit, but then they began paying cash and only buying little things. She and her husband decided to close down while they could still pay their bills.
As a business owner myself, I understand her feelings. But part of the reason our economy is in the bad shape it’s in is because people abused credit. They bought things they couldn’t afford and borrowed the money to do so, but couldn’t pay it back.
One of the projects in Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagersis designed to teach teens about handling credit cards responsibly. When I speak to homeschool groups, I’m often asked at what age people should begin teaching their children about credit. The book is intended for teens, but I tell parents if they really want to teach their children to handle credit responsibly, they must begin when their children are babies.
I’m not suggesting they get their baby a Visa card. But the root of credit problems is usually (I’m excepting medical emergencies here) an inability to delay gratification. Somebody wants a big plasma TV to watch the Super Bowl and they buy it on credit, never thinking about how they’ll pay for it. They don’t have the self-discipline to set aside money each week until they have enough to pay cash for the plasma tv.
How do you raise your children to become adults with the ability to delay gratification, to wait for what they want? You gently make them wait for what they want.
Don’t pick up the baby as soon as she makes a peep. Let her lay in her crib for a bit babbling and cooing before you pick her up.
Don’t buy your preschooler a toy he demands at the store. Let him wait for it until his birthday; he’ll appreciate it more, and he’ll have learned a little bit about waiting for what he wants.
Don’t buy your preteen the latest electronic device the day it comes on the market. Teach her to save up her allowance and birthday money until she can buy it for herself.
The child who learns he doesn’t have to have everything this instant is unlikely to become the guy who puts a $3000 television on his credit card a few days after losing his job. The adults who couldn’t wait until they were actually able to pay for what they wanted helped get us where we are today: in big financial trouble.
When we choose to take control of our children’s education by homeschooling them, our choice says a lot about us. Many people complain about things but never act; we homeschooling parents actually do something when it comes to making sure our children are educated the way we want them to be.
Of course, I think that’s a good thing. But I have to be honest and admit that (speaking only for myself, of course) being the kind of person who takes the bull by the horns means that I tend to think that I’m in control.
Psychologically, I know I’m not in control of everything, but sometimes my behavior suggests otherwise. Growing up as the oldest of four girls who was often held responsible for the behavior of her sisters probably didn’t help.
To make matters worse, after many years of being a homeschooling parent, I got used to being in charge of so many things: what my family ate, what they wore, what books and curriculum my kids used…..every single day. Then, as my kids left home, I had to learn to let them go, and it wasn’t (and still isn’t) always easy.
Perhaps that’s why the title of this book by Tim Sanford got my attention: Losing Control and Liking It: How to Set Your Teen (and Yourself) Free
The subtitle caught my eye more for the reference to setting myself free than setting my teens free, and that’s what made me buy the book.
It was worth the money. Not only did it encourage me in the process of letting my kids go, but it helped me see that wanting to be in control of anything beyond myself can be a great burden, one I was not created to bear.
This is true not only in my relationships with my teens and adult children, but also with relatives, friends and others. This book speaks to the need for taking responsibility for your own behavior without taking responsibility (or letting someone force it on you) for someone else’s.
The method Sanford, a Christian counselor, recommends to make such distinctions helps with problems such as coworkers who expect you to bail them out on their deadlines as well as teens who blame you because you didn’t wake them up in time to get to an appointment.
Sanford also devotes a section to worry and anxiety, the root causes of many parents’ desire to control their teens and even their adult children. Christian homeschooling parents are especially susceptible to this. We’ve often been told by others in the Christian homeschooling community that if we do our job just the right way, we’ll raise fantastic Christian children. Sanford explains why that’s a) not possible, and b) not our job as parents.
He also touches on the concept of God’s rules: Biblical commands, specific Biblical principles and general Biblical principles. I think a misunderstanding of the distinctions between those three groups is probably at the root of most disagreements between homeschooling families, and has caused some of the discord I’ve seen in homeschool support groups.
It’s interesting that this book was published by Focus on the Family. My husband and I are big fans of Dr. James Dobson’s books on raising children; he’s an advocate for purposeful discipline of young children. But I don’t think he spent a lot of time explaining how to transition from diligent discipline of young children to letting go of teens. Maybe I just missed the book where he did so. But this book is really helpful for that, and I wish I could have read it 15 years ago, before my older kids entered their teens. Sanford’s explanation of parental control vs. parental influence would have been particularly helpful to me back then.
I liked this book so much I read it twice. I didn’t agree with everything in it, but I found a lot of food for thought, and some reassurance, too. It’s an especially helpful book for homeschooling parents.
You can read the first chapter of this book here. But don’t do it just because I suggested it. After all, I’m not responsible for what you choose to do ;)
A thirteen-year-old girl decides she wants to be homeschooled so that she has more time to learn about gardening, and farming in general. Her future plans include learning about heirloom seeds. Read her storyin her own words. (I found it in the latest issue of Mother Earth News.)
Little kids love summer. Big kids love summer. But what about teens?
My kids looked forward to every summer until they became teens, and then everything changed. Suddenly, running through the sprinkler just didn’t thrill them anymore.
I was used to them rising early to run out and play with their friends. But once the teen years hit, they’d sleep later and later, completely missing summer mornings and sometimes needing to be called for lunch.
I remember worrying that my older son would suffocate in his room. By 11 am, he was still sound asleep with the window shut tight while the sun heated up that end of the house. My attempts to rouse him were greeted by growls, as though he were a confused bear who thought he was still hibernating through the winter.
Once conscious, he’d stumble downstairs, where the hunger that had built up over 12 or 13 hours of sleep made him eat as though he’d gone days without food. His enormous breakfast would segue into lunch with the rest of us, and he kept on eating. Then he’d head outside to play basketball with friends for the afternoon, come home in time to eat an enormous dinner, and play on the computer before lapsing back into his night-time coma.
I learned from friends with older children that this was actually par for the course for growing teen boys. Looking back, it makes sense to me now. After all, it takes a lot of rest and nourishment to grow to 6″ 4″ and wear a size 16 shoe! But at the time, I was quite mystified.
Do you have a young teen in your house this summer? Are you mystified by some of the things you’re seeing him or her do? As teens’ bodies change, their emotions and behaviors change, too. Learn more about how to live with your teen in my free Special Report, “Ten Tips for Coping with Temperamental Teens.”
What interested me the most is that the rate of truancy increases as children get older, so that by the time they reach 12th grade, well over 40% of them miss at least ten days of school per 176-day school year, and a quarter of them miss 20 days or more per school year.
Some of this can be explained by the fact that 12th graders often have cars and can easily take the day off, drive around town, and no one will notice because they look like the young adults they are, not students. It’s a lot easier for them to play hooky than it is for your average first-grader.
But I wonder if there isn’t another reason so many teens skip school. My memory of the last two years of high school can be mostly summed up by the phrase “relentlessly boring.” Each semester, when I set up my schedule, I squeezed my class requirements into the tightest time period possible, skipping lunch and putting study hall at the end of the day, so I could be out of there as early as possible.
However, I didn’t spend that extra free time loafing. For most of my junior year, I had a job in a hardware store, working from 2:30 to 9 most days. So I needed to get out of school early. But I also had a life, one that extended beyond what was going on in my high school.
Most of my classes were dull, not very useful for the future, or both. There were some useful classes, like typing, home ec and industrial arts, but those of us who were college-bound knew better than to court the possibility of wrecking our GPAs by risking a B or C in those subjects. So I did my best to stay awake through classes that were not very interesting or not very useful: World History via lectures and textbooks, Literature via lectures and textbooks, Sociology via silly games and fake wedding ceremonies. Snore.
However, I took one class during my senior year that was excellent, and I loved it. It was designed and run by one of the school’s social studies teachers, and it was called Public Service Practicum.
The teacher, a highly regarded educator named Richard Chierico, designed the course to help students understand what goes on in local government. He worked out agreements with local government entities, including the village board, the public library board, public works, etc., to allow each of us to work within the system as volunteers, and to shadow various employees so that we would get a firsthand look at how local government operates.
I worked with the public library board, which meant I had the chance to work at all the stations in the library so that I understood just what went on. Then I attended library board meetings after being filled in on the issues by the head librarian. I even attended a gathering of head librarians from all over the region. Having long been a bookworm and regular visitor to the library, I found it all fascinating.
As much as I enjoyed the course, I think what made it extra special is that Mr. Chierico treated us as young adults. He trusted us to go out during the school day to our different posts in local government and to arrange future appointments with our supervisors. He didn’t treat us as other teachers did, as students in need of repetitive instructions and orders. He just expected that we would do what we needed to, and so we did.
I think that’s the problem with high schools, and why there’s such a high truancy rate among older students. What teens do in school is not relevant, it’s not interesting, and it’s too much of what they’ve been doing for all their lives: sit still, raise your hand, you need a pass to go to the bathroom, no you can’t leave campus for lunch. We all know the drill.
Teens are too old for that kind of school. They need to be challenged, trusted and freed. Will some of them bolt if given freedom? Sure, but you can’t imprison everyone because some will run.
Teens are smart enough to know when something’s useful or of value. They’re also smart enough to know when they’re being warehoused. Instead of trying to figure out how to reduce the truancy rate by imprisoning teens further, parents and teachers need to consider other alternatives.
I think this is why so many teens have done well in homeschooling. It gives them the time and the freedom to explore their interests and to consider what they need for their futures. Not to mention, they never need a pass to go to the bathroom.
(For ideas on what useful things teens can do, check out the video below.)
Funny how using Life Prep has been a different experience with each of my children.
Our eldest was very eager to get out on her own, so we emphasized the rent, food and utilities projects over the others. Our son was completely college-minded, so we stuck to more reading and less projects. Dd17 is not in a big hurry to be out on her own, but she’s not sure about college either (she’s already racked up a few credit hours and isn’t sure if she wants to keep going), but she really gets into all of the projects.
She has run a couple of small businesses, so she understands the need to watch your expenses and make prudent choices. She seems to really get into studying how loans work, and how you can save a lot of money by prepaying them.
While working on the projects from the book, she enjoyed playing with some online financial calculatorsat Bankrate.com. They’re wonderful! I plan on adding mention of them to the next edition of the book when we update it again in a few years.
So colleges aren’t what they used to be. Does this mean you shouldn’t send your teen to college?
Not at all. What it does mean is that you and your teen must be extremely diligent in the choice of a college, once you determine that he or she is “college material.”
How to define “college material”:
Motivated to attend college, to study hard and to succeed.
Strong enough to handle peer pressure of all kinds.
Interested in a career that requires a college degree and will allow the degree-holder to make enough money to cover the cost of said college experience and then some.
Willing to help pay for college (important for what it says about your child as much as how it will help financially).
If you still think your teen is “college material,” it’s time for due diligence. Check out prospective colleges thoroughly. This includes Christian colleges, some of which are Christian in name only. If you’re going to leave your teen somewhere for four (or more) years, you want it to be a good, safe place, not just a well-known place, right?
Finally, in light of what we’ve considered in these college posts, consider online learning and/or community college for at least part of your child’s college experience. Starting out by studying at home can give your child time to mature further, in order to face the trials and temptations of modern college life with more maturity than he or she had at 18.
One good book for those who are attracted to the benefits of distance learning for college is Accelerated Distance Learning.
Many college administrators believe that stopping alcohol and drug abuse is the responsibility of the student, not the college.
A recent study finds that not only is alcohol and drug abuse increasing on college campuses, but a majority of college administrators believe that controlling such abuses is the responsibility of the students, not the college.
That may sound good, especially in light of the idea of personal responsibility, but the truth is that parents send their teens off to college to gain maturity as well as learning. Immaturity and personal responsibility are often mutually exclusive. Ultimately, parents expect that their offspring will be safe at college, and that the college or university to which they’re paying thousands of dollars each year will make sure of that.
How do you find a college where law enforcement and the protection of students are priorities? When you’re visiting colleges with your teen, ask questions about campus safety, as recommendedby writer Paul Lloyd Hemphill. The type of response you get should speak volumes.
Having my own homegrown techie available to help me with my site and blog is really convenient, but it has its hazards. She can do things that I can’t do, and I can’t undo.
Case in point: Dd17 was going through one of my childhood photo albums when she suddenly decided my blog needs a photo of me….hence the new addition to the upper right corner of this blog.
“Mom,” she says, “You still have bangs, and you still make that face sometimes!”
I used to have a poster just like this one on my wall, because when I was a teen, my favorite movie star was Humphrey Bogart. The fact that he died the year before I was born made no difference to me. I grew up watching his films on television and thought he was the best actor ever.
Since then, I’ve widened my knowledge of films and the people who appear(ed) in them, but I still enjoy his work. This past week, my husband and I watched two of his films with dd17 in hopes of teaching her how to recognize and appreciate good movies. (Note: we tried this with our older two with mixed results. Hopefully, three’s the charm!)
First up, “Casablanca.” This very famous movie was made during World War II and includes a wonderful cast beyond Bogart, including Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Raines, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre. Romantically bittersweet, it has a theme of personal sacrifice. It’s a terrific film and well-worth watching with your teens.
Next is “Sabrina,” a Billy Wilder film about a chauffeur’s daughter who finds romance in the wealthy family that employs her father. Many believe that Bogart was miscast in this film, and I admit that he often seems uncomfortable. The climax of the film is quite unbelievable. And yet somehow it works.
By the way, “Sabrina” is a showcase for Audrey Hepburn, and a great introduction to her work if you don’t know much about her. My daughter already knew who she was, having seen her recently in “Roman Holiday” (another great movie about personal sacrifice) and “Charade.”
While “Casablanca” would be of interest to both sexes, “Sabrina” is more of a chick flick, although I’m sure someone as poised as Audrey Hepburn would have come up with a more elegant way of describing it.
This past weekend we celebrated our son’s 16th birthday. While all of our children’s birthdays are special, his are a yearly reminder of God’s goodness in caring for him when he was a critically ill newborn. Back when he lay in his isolette with tubes taped to him and monitor leads stuck on him, we didn’t know that he would become the healthy, strong and happy young man he is today. So we celebrate!
I wish we could have known back then that he would be ok. I also wish we could have known that having a baby with disabilities is not the trauma it looks like at first.
It was 16 years ago yesterday that a doctor we’d never seen before interrupted our celebratory hospital dinner (champagne, steak, éclairs) to bluntly tell us that our son had suddenly begun having trouble breathing, his heart wasn’t working right, he would have to be transferred to a larger hospital, and oh, by the way, we think he might have Down syndrome.
Great bedside manner, that guy. It was like being hit by a ton of bricks. At first, we chose to deal with the health issues rather than the spare chromosome and what it meant, because the health issues were more pressing. But once our son began to stabilize, we had to face the fact that he was quite different from his siblings in some important and unchangeable ways.
Like most parents with a special needs child, we discovered that there’s a grief process you go through when you have a child with disabilities. You have to accept that he won’t be president, won’t be a scholar, and in the case of Down syndrome, won’t get to raise a child of his own someday.
But once you learn to stop focusing on the things he won’t do, you can begin to celebrate the things he does. You learn about them as they happen. He brings joy to your family, he works hard to master every little step of development, he teaches his siblings about love and sacrifice, and he’s used by God to strengthen your faith. I hope I don’t come across as a goody-two-shoes when I say that he is actually a great blessing. I wish we could have known that when we got his diagnosis, but at least we know it now.
He’s a lot of fun as well as an occasional source of frustration. That makes him just like his siblings. Yes, I worry about his future, especially when I read terrible things like this. But I also worry about our older children: our daughter living alone in a large city, our son traveling all over the country on business (and out of the country on mission trips), and our younger daughter, who is just reaching the age where she must make some important decisions about her future. Parenting has exponentially increased my prayer life!
And that’s a good thing. God uses parenting to grow us and to make us into the people he wants us to become. The tools he uses for this are our children, who happen to be a blessing in their own right.
That’s just one reason why their birthdays are so special. In the case of our youngest, we also celebrate the fact that he’s made it through so many challenges and is still here with us. For that, we are grateful!
