For all you financially-minded parents, here are some helpful tips how to get the most important thing your child needs: money.
1. Launch a Kickstarter Project
Call it: “I procreated. Give me money. Nuff said.”
2. Teach your kids to beg
Begging has been around since the dawn of mankind. It’s quite popular in China, India, Bangladesh, Africa, Latin America, Europe, Canada, and yes, even the USA. Ever see a kid working over his parents for a Wii U or a Furby at a Toys-R-Us? Pure professionalism–which later in life can lead to a career as a politician or televangelist.
Practice with your kids the outstretched hands; the pitiful Oliver Twist voice: “Please. sir, I want some more.” Make sure it’s dollars–not gruel.
The more forlorn looking your kids, the better. Rip their clothes. Dirty their faces. Better yet, gouge out an eye.
Research studies show that a one-eyed kid receives twice as much sympathy–and compensation–than a kid with two eyes–no matter how puppy-dog sad or teary.
Beggars can be choosers. Try a lucrative neighborhood. Like Corona del Mar.
3. Ask the biological parental units to pay their fair share
They put the kids on the planet. It costs money to raise them. Time to pay up.
4. Rip off a relative
The easiest targets are:
A. Siblings – They may already be used to being bossed around; dismissed as a second class citizen; or declared unworthy as a human being, consequently they might not notice their pockets being picked. Or their inheritance stolen.
Plus if you’re sneaky, secretive, and operate from a back alley in the dark of night in the dead of winter with Beelzebub standing guard, your kids will prosper even more.
Warning: Do not try Method #4 on a sibling who is smarter than you or has a propensity to swing a shinbone around.
Warning #2: Absolutely under NO circumstances attempt this method with a sibling who is a writer. (Are you nuts? Stupid? Suicidal? All three?)
B. Old People – especially those who live alone and are socially isolated; are hungry for company and a home-cooked meal; and have childhood, wife/ex-wife, veracity, anger, and dementia issues.
Play along with any malfeasance that will enrich your kids. This is NOT the time to grow a moral backbone.
Throw your scruples out the window! Ill-gotten wealth is sooo much easier to obtain than in an honest enterprise.
Have your cutest/sweetest/most endearing kid butter up the old person–to grease the path from one bank account to another.
Dangle a carrot, like, “Oh, Poppa, of course you can come to dinner. If you give me your house!”
What do you care if that seems unseemly? Those old folks will be dead soon enough. And then the pick-pocketing will be even easier!
Do not limit yourself to one old person. Look around. They’re everywhere. You can smell them!
They are a virtual goldmine of vulnerability. Be creative. Engender trust–like Charles Keating, the Patron Saint of Ripping Off Old People of their life savings.
OK, maybe he did go to jail. But only for little while as he had plenty of old people’s money to pay for lawyers who got him off on a technicality.
Don’t make Yuck-Chuck’s mistake. He operated in daylight. His banks were open during afternoon nap-time hours (the better to hoodwink with).
Remember: secrecy and darkness are your greatest tools.
5. Sell Your House
If your kids are so terribly desperate for money for whatever reasons and you never learned how to say no, then look no further than your own retirement assets. Cash in your 401-K; your IRA; your life insurance policy; crack open the piggy bank.
If you’re having trouble finagling a house from someone else, sell your own. I am not advocating homelessness–just downsizing.
For instance, if you happen to own a house on the beach that’s worth $3 million, sell it and buy a different house for $2 million–near a pond. Or a drainage ditch. Water is water, isn’t it?
Divide up the left-over $1 million equally. Unless your favorite child wants more. Then by all means give it to him or her. (It’s not like the others aren’t used to this crap by now.)
6. Tell your kids to earn their own money
Or in other words, get a job. They can start at the bottom at any place of employment and if they are hardworking, they will succeed.
Eventually push them in the direction of self-employment. A blowhard boss (the prevalent kind in corporate America) is the pits. You don’t want your kids pitted out all day. Bad for their health–which then can be costly.
In addition, let your kids pick their own profession. It is after all, their lives — not yours, which you’ve screwed up but hope to achieve some sort of glory days through them.
For instance, if a kid wants a career in baseball, for cryin’ out loud let him or her try!
Ever heard of the word encouragement?
Don’t issue a “no way in hell” edict and deem that kid “not talented enough for the big leagues.” Especially when the kid is a teenager and hasn’t even played one college game or reached the peak performance athletic years for many more years to come.
Ever heard of Pete Rose? (Not the gambler guy; the ball player guy.) Little natural talent. Tons of hustle. Had a great career. (Before the gambling part.)
For heaven sakes don’t make the kid have a job as pathetic as yours; that you hate; and pass on that hate to your child. Just because your parental unit ridiculed your natural talent to be a “country gentleman” and interest in being a full-time owner/manager of a “social club,” you can stop the cycle.
Misery does love company. But in the long run it will bite you in the butt. Unless you are God, you don’t get to stick your kid in your preconceived box. It’s uncomfortable. It stunts growth.
If you want your kid to be “rich,” a job attuned to his/her passions is worth infinitely more than the money earned in a soul-sucking office job. Like being an artist or writer, whether or not the money rolls in, the satisfaction of pursing one’s purpose in life is an inestimable reward and a kick in the pants. And way more fulfilling that Bill’s suggestion for me: scraping teeth for a living. Fathers do not always know best.
7. Play the lottery
Good luck with that.
8. Knock on a door in Atherton
Unless your kids are not the “occasional child” that a matriarch favors.
But don’t come knocking on my door.
I know it takes a village. I already paid my dues. More than enough.
Enough is enough.
Nuff said.