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Comment by yabbadabbadoo | Hacker News Reader

The best actionable advice I've read to date regarding giving money to kids without spoiling them - For every dollar they earn, give them $N. That way they have to work, but they don't have to work a repulsive yuppie job to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle.

http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/

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If two different families are doing this, then it's exploitable: Alice earns 1 dollar, receives 5 dollars from her parents, gives them to Bob, Bob tells his parents he earned them, receives 25 dollars, gives them back to Alice, Alice tells her parents she earned them, receives 125 dollars... Or even in one family, the child could "reinvest" part of the $N received this month to get more money next month. The obvious workaround is for the parents to check the child's salary slips, but if the child's employer is in on the scheme, that won't help.

Need not be two different families. Two kids from the same family can pull of this trick as well ?

"Hi Mum, I earned $125k a month working at the local Food Bank...again! Can I have my $625k now please?"

Let me quess - you are Russian?

In my family I could imagine this being pretty ruinous. Being in the software field, it's a lot easier for me to get a job, and one that pays more, than my sisters. I can tell there is already resentment towards this, but if it also meant that I was being given even more by my dad, than I don't want to think what that would do to our relationships.

Perhaps you could use some kind of squashing function on the amount given. The more you earn, the less money you get for every additional dollar.

I imagine the idea is applied to teenager, where it's supposed to teach them hard work and the value of money.

I understand the logic behind it, but I disagree. If you are a very wealth person and your children decide to become volunteers for the red cross, you'll give them less money than if they decide to become bankers on Wall Street?

I think just setting up a baseline income for life would be sufficient. Say 100k/year. Enough that they can comfortably pursue whatever makes them happy, without being rich.

Essentially a family-only basic income guarantee? Sounds like the best idea in the thread so far.

I know someone with that kind of plan, and it isn’t such a good idea: her, and her family pretty much fight over money a lot (and how to work around the situations unexpected by the trust fund rulings); they work soul-crushing yuppy jobs because they were raised to think 100k is nothing, and you can't live without 250, but they all have short-term gratification issues, meaning holding anything that makes 150k/y is near impossible. Most female members of that family can be described as gold-diggers that use the 100 as seed for that endeavour: you'd never suspect how expensive is the re-starter kit for that profession.

That's quite sad. Would they be better off with the entire sum in the long term, or would their problems simply escalate?

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