{"id":70701,"date":"2018-05-15T11:07:37","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T16:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=70701"},"modified":"2018-05-15T23:37:06","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T04:37:06","slug":"people-may-not-inherit-parents-money-dna-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/people-may-not-inherit-parents-money-dna-experts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"People may not inherit parents’ money DNA, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Roxanne (Yanchun) Liu<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

Lori Schwartz\u2019s father, a 74-year-old doctor, only goes to restaurants for dinner where he can use coupons. Raised in a poor family, her father watches how much he spends all the time despite the good paychecks he now earns, embarrassing his daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate it,\u201d she said. \u201cHis cheapness is not attractive. I never want to be like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several adults interviewed for this story said they are comfortable spending more money on themselves than their thrifty parents do, but they are still influenced by their parents\u2019 money habits. These children cherry-pick their parents\u2019 financial behaviors, adopting those that fit with their current economic situation and their expectations of future financial means, said Jean Marie Dillon, a certified financial planner at Freedom Financial Counseling, LLC.
\n<\/p>\n

Schwartz, a 48-year-old mother who used to work in marketing, said she feels comfortable spending her own money but she leans more toward saving than spending, similar to her father but not quite to his extreme. She also adopted her parents’ approach of paying credits cards on time and avoiding debt, Schwartz said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a young son, and me and my husband want to make sure that we can provide for him,\u201d said Schwartz, who has started a 529 college savings plan for her son. \u201cThat kind of changes a lot of things. It\u2019s not just about yourself anymore. It\u2019s about your family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matt Bouvet, a 31-year-old senior video editor living in San Diego, said he likes to save money like his father does, who encouraged his son to read about bond investments and personal finance when he finished college. Instead of risking money on volatile investments like stocks and cryptocurrency, Bouvet puts 6 to 10 percent of his savings into his 401(k) plan.<\/p>\n

Bouvet\u2019s father, a businessman who grew up without much money, never took his family on a vacation trip that involved flying, Bouvet said. The family seldom dined out.<\/p>\n

Bouvet didn\u2019t completely inherit his father\u2019s frugality. Fond of traveling for holidays and eating more expensive food than his father did, Bouvet is doing freelance jobs for extra money to spend on these hobbies and desires.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen [my father] was my age, he already owned a house,\u201d Bouvet said. \u201cHe already had a kid. I am very, very far away from that financially. It\u2019s a different time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mouk Chounlamany, a 33-year-old information technology developer working in Michigan, said his relationship with money is terrible. Born after a war in his home country of Laos and living in Thailand refugee camps and eating grass and eggs when he was a child, Chounlamany said he now spends quite a bit on food and travel, sometimes as much as $1,000 to $2,000 in less than a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re born poor, you know how being poor is like,\u201d Chounlamany said. \u201cWhen you start to have money, you don\u2019t really know how to save it. You don\u2019t think about long-term goals like, here I should start saving, because you feel like you never have it to begin with, so why even start saving now?\u201d<\/p>\n

His mother, however, is still thrifty, eating simple food such as rice and vegetables, Chounlamany said.<\/p>\n

James Dobbs, president at Woodfield Financial Advisors Inc., said many of his clients, several of whom make $200,000 to $700,000 a year and manage their money cautiously, find themselves helping one or more children between the ages of 30 and 50 address financial problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cClients that have substantial wealth, say over $1 million, generally do not share that information with their children,\u201d Dobbs said. \u201cI believe if they told their children how much money they have, the children may start making different decisions about their own financing. It may take away their incentive to work harder. It may make them more dependent or become dependent on their parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wong Xinzhao, a 25-year-old undergraduate student in Chicago, said he follows the saving habits of his parents because he hasn\u2019t seen a better way to deal with money.<\/p>\n

Wong\u2019s parents, whom he said are well-off public figures in China, seldom talk with their son about money management except for a curt tip of \u201csave your money and don\u2019t overspend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although parental money behaviors have significant impact on children, discussing money is usually taboo around the dinner table, Freedom Financial\u2019s Dillon said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLots of clients come to me seeking truth that they never heard from their parents,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Parents’ financial habits may not pass on to their children. (Pictures of Money\/Flickr)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Roxanne (Yanchun) Liu Medill Reports Lori Schwartz\u2019s father, a 74-year-old doctor, only goes to restaurants for dinner where he can use coupons. Raised in a poor family, her father watches how much he spends all the time despite the good paychecks he now earns, embarrassing his daughter. \u201cI hate it,\u201d she said. \u201cHis cheapness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":449,"featured_media":70702,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,4227],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-spring-2018"],"yoast_head":"\nPeople may not inherit parents' money DNA, experts say - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/people-may-not-inherit-parents-money-dna-experts-say\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"People may not inherit parents' money DNA, experts say - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Roxanne (Yanchun) Liu Medill Reports Lori Schwartz\u2019s father, a 74-year-old doctor, only goes to restaurants for dinner where he can use coupons. 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