The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money

by Ron Lieber

In the course of my research, I visited Mormon families on dairy farms in Utah, shadowed ace recyclers who are children in a California junkyard, drank iced tea with wealthy families poolside in the Hamptons, met with immigrants on their coffee breaks who talk about money with their children every day, and hung out in the kitchens of private school parents who have trouble talking about money at all. I’ve been on field trips to pawn shops and payday lenders with working-class students in Ohio and sat in on workshops with New England teachers whose annual salaries are less than what some parents in their schools earn in a month. In Michigan, I even tracked down the young woman known locally as the Bloomfield Hillbilly, a kid whose family has much less than her neighbors in their wealthy suburb and is working furiously to make enough money to buy her own horse.