Entitlement - How it Affects Our Finances, Our Relationships and Our Lives

"Entitlement - How it Affects Our Finances, Our Relationships and Our Lives"," We'll look at ways to reverse this.


In the old days, on a global level, our standard of living was much lower.


Over the years, as our standard of living rose higher and higher, it now takes two incomes just to survive.
 Instead of just going to a movie and some place inexpensive for dinner for a special night out - now we have very expensive forms of entertainment.
 They even read books.
 If you had a telephone, it was a luxury.
 Nowadays, there's very little personal interaction.


We are now leading very insular lives and the end result is that we have more cases of depression, especially among teenagers and young adults.
 This is more than just being dissatisfied with your lot in life.
 Having family and friends around you to share the good times and the bad times.
 Anything and everything that you can possibly want or need can be purchased online.
 In so many different ways we can see the breakdown of the family and of the community coinciding with the breakdown of the economy.
 Instead of listening to the radio and using our creative imagination, or reading a book and letting it take us to different locales, now we have to be entertained.
 Now we need TV, video games, the internet.


Instead of conversation, we plant ourselves in front of TV's.
 People used to have to develop social skills.


Unfortunately the ills of society cannot be reversed by waving a magic wand over them.
 So how do we get past this attitude of entitlement? That the world owes us a living? That if you don't have what you want that it's ok to steal?

How do we go back to the basics of child-rearing?Where the parents made the rules and the children obeyed them.
 That we're raising a generation of children who are growing up to be irresponsible adults who are not held accountable for their actions.


So before we can fix the economy, we have to fix ourselves.
 We have to hold our bankers and our financial institutions accountable for everything.
 We have only to look at the increase in shoplifting to the CEO's of major corporations who have stolen from their company's pension funds.


When the economy started to go down, a taxi driver in New York City was asked what he was going to do if people didn't have enough money to take taxis and he couldn't pay his bills.
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I heard of a woman in her 40's who walked through the produce department of a supermarket and started to eat the grapes and cherries that were on display.
 It was as if she had the right to sample whatever goods were out there.


When doctors and patients submit fraudulent insurance claims - those costs aren't just washed away - they get passed onto the other people who are insured.
 A neighbour of his was one of his golfing buddies, and he was also a doctor.
 They talked about gold, about politics, their hobbies.
 When he got his bill from the hospital, he was absolutely outraged to see that that neighbour charged his insurance company for every single visit for the month that he was there.
 He then called this doctor friend of his and told him that if he didn't call the insurance company and rectify his mistake, he was going to contact the media and start an investigation.


The entitlement issues we face today can be traced back to the low standards we set for our children.
 We are raising children who reach adulthood as grasping individuals taking whatever they can from whomever they wish without stopping to question their actions.
 She moved to a smaller place and planned on using the profits from the sale as her retirement income.
 They felt that the money from the sale was their inheritance and it should go to them.
 Her adult children were living their own lives, earning their own money, and not supporting her.


In the US, they have been conducting surveys among middle management to upper-management employees who were laid off when their company's downsized.
 What we see happening to these people - they empty out their retirement funds, their pensions, their savings accounts, their family's savings accounts, and mortgage their houses to the hilt.
 If they cannot get the kind of money that they had been making, they are choosing to go on unemployment for however long it lasts and to live off everyone else.
 These are people who are able-bodied and capable of working but who choose not to - and society is supporting them.


A couple of years ago, I heard of a teenager who asked her father for a car after she got her license.
 He didn't have much money so he got her a new Volkswagen.
 Her father couldn't even claim on the insurance because it was deliberate.
 This father, as well-meaning as he probably thought he was, only contributed to his daughter's sense of entitlement.


This disregard for property, for other people's financial problems, and for other people's feelings represents the kind of attitude that is running rampant among many cultures.


How can we expect our politicians, our bankers, our financial institutions, our corporations, to exhibit more accountability than we expect from our own children?

Many children, single and married, move back home into their parents' home because they cannot afford to make it on their own.
 It is far better to teach children moral and financial responsibility when they are young than have to learn it the hard way when they are older.
 My father kept on giving me money, even when I was in my 30's and I never really learned how to be independent financially.


I could go on and on giving you examples of entitlement in every strata of society, but the ones that I have cited are ample demonstrations of how we're contributing to the downfall of our economy.
 We're taking the path of least resistance and while we're holding everyone else accountable for their actions, we're taking no responsibility for our own.
 Learn how to say no to yourself.