Enrique

Who’s fault is that she can not balance a checkbook? The Parents. Another financial idiot was created by believing that Love is giving everything to a child.

Lazy Man and Money

I can’t balance my checkbook. I mean my parents taught me at one point, but I realized it’s more work that it’s worth. I just keep enough in the that there’s not a problem. Perhaps I have to deal with fewer $200 pairs of jeans to keep a surplus in there, but I’m okay with that. I do go over my statements at the end of the month to make sure there are no mistakes, but that’s about it.

MrFunk

You guys still have chequebooks? Or is that just a figure of speech these days?

Brice

When you hear stuff like that it’s hard not to shake your head. My parents have done the same thing with my little sister. They bought her a 12,000 dollar car cash, sent her to a 24,000 dollar two year art school, and she works in a tmobile call center as a temp. Now she has no common sense when it comes to money at all. Another shining example is my good friend. His wife stays home to watch their one year old, he works full time, is a full time student, and they are on welfare. But when I bought a 12 dollar pair of shoes from walmart to save some extra cash he laughed. He actually said that he could never buy off brand shoes. And then made himself look even more intelligent by saying “he had too much pride for that.” I’m not a financial guru or anything but I definitely thinks blogs like this and those kinds of stories need to be told more often to raise awareness. Or at least for parents to try and teach their kids some financial responsibility.

Jonathan

Hey Lazy Man, have you read The Lazy Person’s Guide to Investing? Your name reminded me of the book.

I don’t carry a checkbook. I keep track of everything on the computer. The only time I would bring a notepad or checkbook would be if I was tracking EVERY single thing I spent to see where I should cut back on.

Laura

This author fleshes out a good point very clearly. It hits home. I need my designer jeans like a crack addict needs his pipe, so I get around this by limiting myself to one pair a year.

What frustrates is how working for a company at the “peon” stage costs so much to begin with. Example: The savings I plan to use as a down payment is in an ING fund earning a solid yield of about $60 a month for me. If you forget about the benefits of compound interest for a second that may seem solid—that’s $60 I don’t have to do a thing for. It’s a good start, don’t get me wrong, it would let me move to a third world country and live a pretty solid simple life without working much. But I’m not in a fishing village in rural Botswana I’m a twenty-something in SF who appreciates quality jeans and commutes everyday to her a-little-too-close-to-peon job. That commute costs me $60 in bridge toll a month, so there goes that money.

You get my drift, there’s a bunch of other ways this happens as well making it hard to break out of the grind. I do believe if we’re clever enough and start early enough it’s possible.

Vic

I don’t “balance a checkbook either.” However I do “balance my quicken” religiously.

LornaJay

The article was really good, in terms of managing money – I was taught as a child about budgets and savings (ta folks).

However, the rest of the blog is bitter, vindictive and incredibly prejudiced. I was hoping for other interesting comments, but only found a load of spleen about fat people, folk with mental disabilities, etc…..

Sadly, that one’s just fallen off my bloglines list.

Kitty

Bah. Violent Acres is a boring troll. Just look at its other posts – making fun of people’s kids, being grossed out by fat people, disabled people make it uncomfortable, poor people are dumb – so original, so groundbreaking.

TTFK

http://www.violentacres.com/ just put up an update on Marilyn:

http://www.violentacres.com/archives/105/drunken-arguments-are-rarely-interesting