A group of young people who often run into the kinds of difficulties we’re talking about are those with attention and impulsiveness problems. Such problems may be connected with specific learning disabilities (LD) that lead them to avoid thinking about financial subjects, such as analyzing their income versus expenses, or managing a bank account. It’s not that they aren’t capable of the simple math those tasks involve. It may be that the way numbers are displayed on a bill or bank statement distracts them with too much digital information competing for their attention. Or the problem might be one of impulse control. Or, poor test performance may have convinced them they’re “no good” at math.
Contributor Ken Kaye Archive
What’s The Deal?
Friday, April 3rd, 2009 by Ken Kaye
“Trust me,” my younger son said–sincerely. Yet there were countless mishaps with money, related to disorganization and unreliability. The freelance web design job that was going to earn him $750 for ten hours’ work turned out to take sixty hours—and then weeks more before the clients finally paid. His optimistic rent check, mailed to a landlord in expectation of being able to beat it to the bank with a promised payment from a client, bounced. Cell phone and internet were cancelled at various times for nonpayment, leaving him—unless rescued hastily by his mother or myself—without a way for prospective clients to reach him. Time and again, we found reasons to keep the wolf from his door—usually extracting nominal assurances that he’d learned a valuable lesson. Our son’s “trust me” had long since acquired the opposite meaning to us: a red flag.