FOOL'S EYE VIEW
Kids! What Can You Do?

By Jane Mack (TMFJane)
September 14, 2001

You know that saying about not teaching grandmother to suck eggs? Well, is there one that applies to kids who simply won't listen?

We had one of our former lodgers staying with us for a couple of days. He'd come back to his old place of work to print off his PhD thesis before starting his first 'proper' job out in the big wide world.

As is usual with students he's run up some debts. They're not as bad as they could be, mind – these days graduates usually start their first job with average debts of around £6,000 and he's not quite in that league. Nearly, but not quite. So, in between discussing the dreadful events of the past week, I spent one evening running through his finances with him to show him how he could clear them. His main problem is that he's one of these very generous types. If he buys a bunch of flowers for his girlfriend, it's a really big bunch – a single rose wouldn't be enough. And he's very quick to put his hand in his pocket when it comes to buying a round in the pub.

After working through each of the debts, he eventually accepted that he was attacking them from the wrong angle by struggling to clear his frighteningly large interest-free overdraft instead of first dealing with the smaller debts on his 19% credit cards.

His credit rating is shot to pieces from the sounds of it and it's going to take him some time to improve it but, as long as he's sensible, he should be back on track in about a year or so. I felt rather proud of him really. He's always been very good at putting up with my motherly lecturing and we ended the evening with me thinking "Hurrah, another Foolish convert."

The trouble is, the very next day he phones to say he's missing his girlfriend so he's going to drive home for the night but will be back the next day. Considering what we'd been discussing the night before, I pointed out to him that it would cost him £30 in petrol for the round trip – money he couldn't really afford. "I know," he says, "but I'm going to do it anyway."

Fair enough. It's his life and I'm not his mother. And I was pretty amused later when he told me she'd been out!

When he finally left he told me he considered himself semi-converted about paying off his debts. Semi-converted? I want him to be totally converted but I clearly didn't quite manage to press home the importance of taking full control of his finances. If you've got any suggestions let me know.

More: Get out of Debt Centre