UNITED STATES—It’s a firm belief that as soon as you get it disappears into thin air. You might have an idea what I’m referring to, but on the other hand some of you still might be in the dark. I’m talking about money. I feel like the more you have the quicker it vanishes from your hands. Money just doesn’t stay with you as long as you want it to. Most adults understand this all too well. Why? We understand as you age you have to take care of responsibilities. I wish I could say that for kids and teens, because they don’t seem to get it.

Those who are not accustomed to paying bills or who have not come to the realization that things you want in life don’t come free, have difficulty grasping that you don’t just point and receive. So it brings up a major question: what are we doing as a society to prepare children for the real world? I was always a firm believer that as soon as I could work I wanted a job. My parents didn’t stop me from that either, on the flip-side my younger brother was never pushed to work as a teenager, and I wonder if that transpired if it would change his laissez faire attitude that he has now.

There are people who just do the bare minimum when it comes to earning money and there are those who literally put in the work because they are not fixated on just covering the basics. They’d like to have a little bit over after all the bills have been paid and taken care of. I think we all would love it if money actually grew on trees, and if we ever needed it we could just go out in the backyard and get whatever we wanted whenever we needed it. It doesn’t work that way kids, and if it did, I think our society would be quite different because it raises the question of rather anyone would need to work if we had unlimited money.

Parents absolutely should make their kids do chores and earn any allowance that they choose to give them. By developing a work ethic at an early age it gets the psyche built into the child that by working they can make money. With money you can buy things you want and need, so the cycle begins. When you teach people the importance of money and how to respect it, they tend to appreciate it more. That is the problem with society, so many people have things come so easily to them, and they don’t understand what it means to actually work for something.

I blame a vast majority of this on the world of celebrity and stardom, which loves to flamboyantly display all their monies and materialistic items. I know I’m not the only person who has seen those Instagram and Snapchat photos with musicians, social media icons, actors, actresses, athletes, the list goes on flaunting what they have, that so many others wished they had.

When money is depicted in that manner in the public sphere, everyone assumes it just easily comes, but it doesn’t. You have to work for it; some are spoiled brats and just get it freely from their parents who worked so hard so their kids would have the things that perhaps they did not have growing up.

Written By Kelsey Thomas