Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats

Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats: Economics Family Style

Reviewed by Stuart Nachbar

I did not grow up exceedingly rich or exceptionally poor, but my parents wanted to make sure that I knew the value of a dollar. While they never told us about their personal financial downturns until I reached high school, they made it quite clear that if I wanted anything they considered beyond their means—a car, for instance—then I would have to save up for it.

{mosimage}The Love and Logic Institute’s family money guide, Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats, is a book that my parents would have appreciated. This is a very detailed book that helps parents and their children together in lessons about managing and spending money. It is well balanced on concepts of values and basic personal finance for children, and it emphasizes the need to help children make their own choices, since they will eventually be on their own. There are also games, as well as lessons, but I wondered if the games might be better taught in the classroom where children could see not only the consequences of their own actions, but the consequences of their classmates’ poor decisions.

There has not been a better time for Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats to become available to parents. We are living in an economy where parents will be increasingly forced to tell their children why they cannot afford to buy the current fashion statement or the coolest and latest in electronics. Parents might allow their son to have the latest version of the John Madden football game, but tell him to live with the two year old edition of Guitar Hero. Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats helps parents provide a better answer than simply “no.”

Curious to learn more about the publishers, I checked out their Web site at www.loveandlogic.com. Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats is one of a comprehensive series of parental help guides, some books and some in audio, that have been produced by this Golden, Colorado-based company over the past 31 years. The publishers also support their products with considerable online content. However, Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats is quite unlike their rest of their offerings.

First, Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats is meant to be a lifetime lifeline; other products are more age-specific. The authors, Jim Fay and Kristan Leatherman, apparently intended for parents to refer to the book from time to time during the entire time their son or daughter lives under their roof. There are two problems: books age and become dog-eared and weather-beaten and, financial times and concepts—especially access to credit— frequently change, so parents have new options that would be uncovered. I hope the authors develop online materials to support this book or develop a market program to attract parents to later versions in print.  Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats appears to be like the career classic: What Color is My Parachute? It can be a title that sells for decades, but is constantly revised to draw repeat buyers.    

Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats is 450 pages long, more pages than any other title by this publisher. Because of the page size and page volume, the book resembles a thick computer manual. People judge books by their cover, and Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats does not have good visual appeal. However, a smaller book would have been a thicker one. Age-segmented personal finance books and tools would look less intimidating; however, their markets would be smaller.

Millionaire Babies or Bankrupt Brats is well written and has many good insights and ideas. However, it looks like a daunting book for parents who do not like to read.

 
Contact Stuart Nachbar at http://www.EducatedQuest.com , a blog on education politics, policy and technology or read about his first book, The Sex Ed Chronicle, a novel on education and politics in 1980 New Jersey, at http://www.SexEdChronicles.com .