Anonymous wrote:Great. This can be incentive to her to get awesome grades and a great career where she can afford what she wants.

Anonymous wrote:DD8 has been going to friends houses and many live in very nice houses. We live in an inner suburb with primarily older houses, but she is in an activity where most of her friends live in the exurbs where there are mainly new builds. She goes over to their houses and has started saying she wished we lived in a nicer house like that. Happened again last night.

The spread between what our house would sell for and what theirs would sell for isn’t as astronomical as I’m sure she thinks. We are just in a far more desirable and practical location, making our modest home more desirable.

We bought our house in 2009 for cheap and have re-fi’d a couple times into 2.5% interest rate. Our house would sell for more than double we bought it for, but it’s such a great place to be in to have a small mortgage payment and we will have no payment before she goes to college. It’s financial freedom.

Last night when she said she wished we lived in a nicer house like that, she said she knows we can’t afford it. However, we very much could and then some. We may about $500k a year. The approach I’m taking with DD is very practical to explain why we stay … we have no debt, we can pay for college for her, we can pay for her crazy expensive activity, we can retire earlier, she won’t ever need to help us financially when we are older, etc. Is this too much info for an 8 year old? Would you explain it a different way? She’s pretty mature, so I’ve taken to just telling her how it is with a lot of things recently.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"I look forward to visiting you someday in a large and beautiful home" That's what I would have said. And that's all.

Imho, it's ridiculous to take what they say so seriously and be embarrassed in any way.

This! Boundaries, op. She is a child. This should be as real to you as if she said she wanted a pet unicorn. She is not an adult. She is a child. You are in charge, not her. She needs you to be the grownup here.

This is stupid and infantilizing. An 8 y/o knows unicorns aren’t real, but sees first hand their friends in larger homes.

The clock is ticking down on your ability to instill values in your kids. The older they get the more they will look to outside sources to color how they view the world.

Older elementary age is the perfect time to have basic, but honest conversations with your kids about stuff like money, sex, puberty, etc.

I don’t think you need to go as far as showing your kids Redfin estimates and your savings account. But there’s nothing wrong with explaining concepts about location affecting real estate costs, that everything in life involves trade offs, etc.

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Op here. This is generally my parenting style. I’ve told her she can ask me about anything. My parents were very weird about money and I had no idea how to manage money or why certain financial decisions weren’t great ones until way later in life.

I think it can be explained in a very matter of fact way without any judgement to other’s situations.

For the PPs that said she was jealous or bratty or spoiled … it was said without any envy. More just like “they have a nice house, I wish ours was like that” but said very neutrally. The way she said it is what made me take a very practical approach on explaining it to her.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"I look forward to visiting you someday in a large and beautiful home" That's what I would have said. And that's all.

Imho, it's ridiculous to take what they say so seriously and be embarrassed in any way.

This! Boundaries, op. She is a child. This should be as real to you as if she said she wanted a pet unicorn. She is not an adult. She is a child. You are in charge, not her. She needs you to be the grownup here.

This is stupid and infantilizing. An 8 y/o knows unicorns aren’t real, but sees first hand their friends in larger homes.

The clock is ticking down on your ability to instill values in your kids. The older they get the more they will look to outside sources to color how they view the world.

Older elementary age is the perfect time to have basic, but honest conversations with your kids about stuff like money, sex, puberty, etc.

I don’t think you need to go as far as showing your kids Redfin estimates and your savings account. But there’s nothing wrong with explaining concepts about location affecting real estate costs, that everything in life involves trade offs, etc.

Anonymous wrote:I have an 8 year old who has on occasion made similar comments about other people having bigger houses than ours (we have family farther outside the beltway).

I’ve explained you’re right, they do have really nice homes and it’s so nice to visit. We could afford a house just like that, but not in our neighborhood. We’d have to give up walking places, going into the city often (we live right near a metro station), and would have to change schools/sports teams for us to move out there though. That shuts down the fantasy of a bigger house pretty quickly.

Also, he hates being in the car for more than 10-15 min. so when we do drive out to these places (usually along 66) he will make comments about “is this traffic?” “Why do we have to spend so long in the car.”)

I think kids this age can generally understand the concept of trade offs, so I’m okay explaining why we made the choice that we did and what that means we’re giving up vs gaining.

Anonymous wrote:I think you tell her house prices depend more on location than niceness. You like yours because it’s closer to the things you guys do.