It's All Right to Ask Your Kids to Chip In
When money is tight, family members can pool their earnings to make ends meet -- even the children.
By Knight Kiplinger, Editor in Chief
From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, July 2009
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Q. Is it fair of my husband and me to insist that our teenage children contribute some of their after-school and summer earnings to our family budget? We're a family of modest means.
Yes. Throughout history, especially in lower-income families, it was expected that the earnings of all family members would be pooled for the family's benefit, even if children were allowed to keep a small part for themselves. The concept that children may use all of their earnings for their personal consumption is a relatively new phenomenon born of affluence -- and it's a privilege not often enjoyed by their moms and dads.
You can help train your children for their future obligations as parents by discussing with them a reasonable division of their earnings among current family needs, their discretionary spending and a savings account for their future needs.
Thoughts on tenure
Q: I am a young assistant professor, and I feel that professional advancement and higher earnings for myself and my peers are blocked by the refusal of aging, tenured professors to retire -- even those everyone thinks have lost their passion for teaching and research. Do you think that lifetime tenure is morally defensible?
No, I don't. Tenure was invented to protect professors from being fired for politically or intellectually unpopular views. But today there are other ways besides tenure to prevent this. I don't believe in lifetime employment rights (with the possible exception of federal judges). Everyone should be subject to periodic performance reviews. Professors should be judged on their teaching skills and scholarship.
Age should be irrelevant, as it became when mandatory retirement ages were banned years ago. Some very senior professors have more vitality and originality than much younger teachers, while others -- after fair evaluation -- should be required to step aside.
Reader Comments (4)
Posted by: Bob at 06/18/2009 11:00:58 AM
Tenure was also designed to protect instructors who had worked their way up the salary scale and hopefully retiring from being replaced prematurely by a younger person at a much lower wage. The young professor will find himself in the same position in a few years. He is foolish to let his ambition override the fact that he will one day be the older professor. While everyone young and old should be able to do the job, making up excuses(loss of passion) to force out the older person is NOT morally defensible and very short sighted. Interesting that Mr. Kiplinger would make an exception for federal judges since it contradicts what he just said.
Posted by: Nomen at 06/18/2009 08:28:15 PM
I can't think of anything more political than the appointment of a federal judge and there should be an easier way of public recall if the judges are guilty of promoting their own agendas and making policy or if they are just plain incompetent.
Posted by: Grace at 06/21/2009 02:25:30 AM
My husband is 68 years old. He earned his PhD while on active duty with the military by giving up leave time. His MBA was invaluable as a corporate executive and his writing skills produced one of the best and earliest books on outsourcing. Today in his third career, one of his students commended him for his teaching skills and the rest of his class applauded. I think the university, the students and his colleagues are well served by a professor who has an excellent work history, who has travelled all over the world as a consultant, and who loves to teach. Age is not the measure of a fine teacher.
Posted by: Kim at 07/01/2009 05:03:07 AM
Tenure does not make sense. Merit based hiring and retention makes sense regardless of age.