Teach Them to Swim

(I write this as I reflect on a post I saw on Threads. I couldn't copy it before it disappeared, so I'm working from memory, Please forgive my mistakes if any.)

The goal is not to have your kids retire you. The goal is to retire your kids.

I read this post on Threads, and while I understood the desire, I didn't agree with it.

I believe that the person saying this really loves his kids. It feels like he is saying, I don't want my children to struggle the way I did. And every good parent wants the best for their children; we want to hand them a life with no fears. No concerns. No problems. We want our children to have a great life. That, to many, is the mark of good parenting.

But if you really think about it, it is a bad philosophy. Behind this seemingly noble idea is a risk of a love gone wrong. It is an example of how the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

The Gift That Isn't

Money, in the right amount, is one of the most life-giving things. It opens doors. It funds dreams. It buys the breathing room to try something and fail without being fatal. It is a gift that keeps on giving.

But past a certain point, the same gift starts to take.

Too much of it, handed over too freely, doesn't free a person. It cripples them instead. Money removes the very struggles that build capability. A "trust fund baby" isn't a compliment; it describes someone who was given so much that they never needed to become anything. That's not building someone up; it is destroying that person, while dressing it up as generosity.

Money should be used to give our children opportunities. It should not pave the road for them.

Teach Them to Swim

My son when he was young. learning to swim.

A swim class is where our children learn by struggling. To struggle enough to learn how to stay afloat under their own power, while knowing that we will not let them drown. That is the whole of it. Money should be there to prevent a catastrophic disaster, while still allowing the constructive struggle to take place. It is the struggle that allows us to build strength.

I want to give my children enough that they will not drown. A safety net. Some breathing space. Ground solid enough that a bad year, a wrong turn, one failed attempt doesn't destroy them.

But I do not want to give them so much that they forget how to swim.

Because the struggling is the point. The strength built in the struggle, the resilience that comes from overcoming failures; failure inevitably rears its ugly head no matter what we do. I want my children to come to the realisation that they are stronger than they think they are. This strength only comes from struggling. It is the thing that will serve them for the rest of their lives. No inheritance can substitute. And a large enough inheritance can quietly rob them of ever learning it.

A small advantage keeps their head above water while they learn the strokes. A large one means they never learn the strokes.

Prepare Them for Life, Not Life for Them

If I had to put my whole parenting philosophy on money into one line, it would be this:

Prepare our kids for life, not prepare life for our kids.

Those are different ideas. Preparing life for them means smoothing every road, removing every obstacle, paying off every difficulty for the children. Preparing them for life is the harder, slower work of building the person who can overcome the obstacle themselves. One builds a comfortable home. The other builds a safe home.

I challenge my children to think, and I invite them to challenge me right back. I would rather raise someone who argues with me well than someone who simply agrees. When they push back and make a good case, they win. That is the point.

I encourage them to try. Try and fail now, especially when the failures are not fatal. When the failures do not tar you for life. Climb walls. Experiment with different sports, and fail.

I show them how to invest, with a little of their own money, real money, in a real market. When they watch their own few dollars rise and fall, they are being inoculated, early and cheaply, against the emotions that wreck grown investors. Better they learn to sit with a falling number at twelve than at forty-five.

I plan to make them work when they are of legal age — a late-night F&B stint teaches things a classroom cannot.

And when they are grown, I plan to give earlier rather than larger: money early in life, when liquidity is tight and the loans might otherwise swallow them, but never so much that it drowns them.

The Real Inheritance

I think the most valuable things I want to leave my children are never going to be monetary wealth

The ability to think for themselves. The steadiness to watch a market fall and not panic. The knowledge that they can try, fail, and get back up — because they have done it before, in small ways, with a net beneath them and a parent who let them fall anyway.

That is not a smaller gift than money. It is the larger one. And unlike a windfall, it is the kind of thing they cannot outgrow, cannot squander, and cannot lose.

Give them roots. Give them wings. Give them the strength to use both.

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I write on topics related to financial habits and decisions. Do explore my other articles at https://www.williamseah.com/blog if the ideas resonate. Drop me an email at reach.william@gmail.com or text me at 9673 1523 if you'd like to chat over coffee or whisky.