Are You Spending Too Much on Your Kids?

Mar 26, 2008 by Jane Bryant Quinn

What made me snap when I started looking at how much parents pay to raise their kids? Maybe it was seeing all those P22,000 nintendo Wiis and P9,800 iPod Nanos fly off the shelves. Or perhaps it was the P15,000 entertainment package for a three-year-old’s birthday party. Or the Bugaboo “travel system” (a high-end baby stroller) that costs over P50,000.

This kind of overspending is not good for kids or their parents—because, unless you’re in the top income bracket, the only way to give your children everything they want (or everything marketers tell you they shoud have) is to neglect your own retirement saving. And the message you’re sending, meanwhile, is that money grows on trees.

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