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Back to School Money Questions: Dad, Why is Your Job Different?

What makes self employment different from working for a big company?

As I stated in , I was surprised this summer at the frequency and the depth of my kid’s questions about my job and how I earn a living.

I have no idea where these money and job questions came from.  There has been no discussion about jobs and money in school because there was no school!

My thought is that my kids are having money and job discussions with their school friends.  Due to the summer down time, kids have more time to ask each other questions that they would never think to ask their own parents.

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Because my kids go to a private school, there is a huge divergence of parents and household income levels.  My kids have school friends who live in apartments and multi-million dollar houses.  My kids have friends who drive brand new cars and who drive cars that are not worth as much as the annual insurance premiums.

Some of the school parents that my kids know well are out-of-town on work constantly.  They also see parents like me that never miss a school event and are active in the school community.

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I have operated most of my adult life in the financial services industry.  For me, it has been natural to have money and job discussions with my kids.  I know that most other parents don’t feel the same degree of comfort having money and job discussions with their kids.

The first question I received from my kids was job-related.  They asked: “Why is your job different from (insert name of friends Dad here)?”

I explained to my kids the difference in career choices. My first point to them was the big difference between self-employment and working for a large company. There are trade-offs that a self-employed person makes versus a person that works for a large company.

Doctors, lawyers, dentists, and corporate executives have very different career lifestyle than self-employed people. There is nothing good or bad about being self-employed versus working for a large company.  But kids need to be aware of the differences.

Your career choice is first a lifestyle choice. When a young kid out of college decides what kind of lifestyle they want, that makes choosing a job much easier.

I read once that the definition of a self-employed person is someone who is willing to work ten to twelve hours a day so they don’t have to work eight hours a day for someone else.  I could not agree more with that statement.

Another way to look at a self-employed career is that a kid has to have the confidence to not know how much money they are going to make every month; sometimes for several months at a time.

Beginning in my next bog post, I will get down to the nitty gritty money questions that I have been asked by my kids recently.  I had no idea that they knew as much as they did.  I was shocked even more about what they wanted to know.

Ric Lager
Lager & Company, Inc.

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