Entitlement - How it Affects Our Finances, Our Relationships and Our Lives

In this article we are going to look at how entitlement works globally and see the reasons behind our bank failures, our pension failures, our financial institutions and then we'll bring it into a very personal level of how our attitudes of entitlement are bringing failures into our own lives. We'll look at ways to reverse this. We'll look at the issue of why our attitudes of entitlement are a luxury that we can no longer afford.

In the old days, on a global level, our standard of living was much lower. Our cars were basic, our entertainment was much less costly and in most economies around the world, families were able to make it on one income.

Over the years, as our standard of living rose higher and higher, it now takes two incomes just to survive. Instead of using one car for the family, now we see two cars or more for the family. Instead of just going to a movie and some place inexpensive for dinner for a special night out - now we have very expensive forms of entertainment.

In the old days, when we had a much lower standard of living people actually sat around in the evening and talked to one another. They even read books. They listened to the radio and used their imagination to recreate the scenes in their heads. If you had a telephone, it was a luxury. People made appointments to see one another, they didn't sit on the phone for hours on end. Nowadays, there's very little personal interaction. People sit on cellphones, they do text messaging, they sit on their computers, they do instant messaging, emails or messageboards - and social interaction has become a thing of the past.

We are now leading very insular lives and the end result is that we have more cases of depression, especially among teenagers and young adults. We see more people today on anti-depressants than any other time in the history of mankind. This is more than just being dissatisfied with your lot in life. It has more to do with feeling a lack of purpose in your life. Having family and friends around you to share the good times and the bad times. This is about being able to live your life without having a single person in your life. Anything and everything that you can possibly want or need can be purchased online. You don't ever have to leave your house. In so many different ways we can see the breakdown of the family and of the community coinciding with the breakdown of the economy.

The higher standard of living that we've grown accustomed to isn't really about buying toilet paper in different colours, but it's actually separating ourselves from the family unit. Instead of listening to the radio and using our creative imagination, or reading a book and letting it take us to different locales, now we have to be entertained. Now we don't entertain ourselves. Now we need TV, video games, the internet...but the worst part is that we have isolated ourselves from each other.

Instead of conversation, we plant ourselves in front of TV's. Instead of board games that can be played with the family, we're now playing games on the computers - we're having online relationships that are usually disappointing and we aren't reading books like we used to. People used to have to develop social skills. Now with modern technology and a lack of social interaction, social skills seem to be at the bottom of the list of priorities.

Unfortunately the ills of society cannot be reversed by waving a magic wand over them. As a rule people don't change unless they are forced to change. So how do we get past this attitude of entitlement? That the world owes us a living? That if you don't have what you want that it's OK to steal?

How do we go back to the basics of child-rearing?

Where the parents made the rules and the children obeyed them. How do we get parents to see that their permissive attitude is damaging their children? That it's not OK to whine and cry until you get your own way. That we're raising a generation of children who are growing up to be irresponsible adults who are not held accountable for their actions.

These same children will grow up to be dissatisfied with life, blaming others for their failures and not able to hold down a job.

So before we can fix the economy, we have to fix ourselves. We have to learn how to put back into the community what we have taken from it. We have to hold our bankers and our financial institutions accountable for everything. Our greed on a personal level corresponds with the greed on a corporate level. We have only to look at the increase in shoplifting to the CEO's of major corporations who have stolen from their company's pension funds. Now that we're facing very very hard times, we need to see how our attitude is causing our own destruction.

When the economy started to go down, a taxi driver in New York City was asked what he was going to do if people didn't have enough money to take taxis and he couldn't pay his bills. Without batting an eyelid and having to think twice about it, he said "I'd steal."

I heard of a woman in her 40's who walked through the produce department of a supermarket and started to eat the grapes and cherries that were on display. She didn't pay for them, nor did she feel guilty for having taken them. It was as if she had the right to sample whatever goods were out there. Although security would not have been called for pilfering grapes, especially since the goods would not be found on her, it's easy to see why a storeowner's losses would have to be passed onto its customers.

When doctors and patients submit fraudulent insurance claims - those costs aren't just washed away - they get passed onto the other people who are insured.

I recently heard of a man who went into the hospital and was there for close to a month. A neighbour of his was one of his golfing buddies, and he was also a doctor. And every day he came to the hospital, he said hello to his friend. They talked about gold, about politics, their hobbies... and not once did he discuss this man's medical problems.. and this man thought it was very nice of his neighbour to drop by. When he got his bill from the hospital, he was absolutely outraged to see that that neighbour charged his insurance company for every single visit for the month that he was there.

While most people would shrug their shoulders and not do anything about it because they didn't have to pay for it out of their own pocket, this man called his insurance company and reported the fraud. He then called this doctor friend of his and told him that if he didn't call the insurance company and rectify his mistake, he was going to contact the media and start an investigation. They lived in a small town and the doctor realised that he would be forced out of business if he didn't drop the charges, which is probably the only reason he eventually notified the insurance company that he was dropping those charges.

The entitlement issues we face today can be traced back to the low standards we set for our children. The bar needs to be set higher, much higher. We are raising children who reach adulthood as grasping individuals taking whatever they can from whomever they wish without stopping to question their actions.

I recently heard of a widow in her late 50's who sold the farm that she and her husband had owned for all of their marriage. She moved to a smaller place and planned on using the profits from the sale as her retirement income. Her children were so angry that they even refused to speak to her. They felt that the money from the sale was their inheritance and it should go to them. What kind of distorted thinking is that? She and her husband had worked the farm, had put in their life's energy in that farm and she had every right to sell it and do whatever she wished with the money she received from it. Her adult children were living their own lives, earning their own money, and not supporting her. They weren't entitled to one cent, yet they are trying to make her feel guilty for taking what she so rightfully earned.

In the US, they have been conducting surveys among middle management to upper-management employees who were laid off when their company's downsized. There seems to be a growing trend among these people to try for a few months to find other employment, but then shortly afterwards, they give up and stop looking because they cannot find a job that pays the same kind of money. What we see happening to these people - they empty out their retirement funds, their pensions, their savings accounts, their family's savings accounts, and mortgage their houses to the hilt. They have decided not to look for a job. If they cannot get the kind of money that they had been making, they are choosing to go on unemployment for however long it lasts and to live off everyone else. Some of them are sending their spouses to work at menial jobs, others are collecting food stamps and welfare and this number is growing rapidly. These are people who are able-bodied and capable of working but who choose not to - and society is supporting them.

You don't have to look further than this to see how a country's economic crisis is irrevocably tied to the entitlement issues of its populace.

A couple of years ago, I heard of a teenager who asked her father for a car after she got her license. Her parents were divorced and her father was trying to compensate for not being in the house as a full-time dad. He didn't have much money so he got her a new Volkswagen. She was so angry that he didn't get her a luxury car, that she deliberately rammed her car into a stone wall and practically demolished it. Her father couldn't even claim on the insurance because it was deliberate. He ended up buying her a used car so that she would have transportation. This father, as well-meaning as he probably thought he was, only contributed to his daughter's sense of entitlement. Had I been that child's parent, I would never have bought her a replacement car and I would have had her go out and get a job and pay back, each week from her salary, every penny of the amount of the new car that she had been given.

This disregard for property, for other people's financial problems, and for other people's feelings represents the kind of attitude that is running rampant among many cultures. When parents accept this kind of behaviour from their children, they are setting their children up for failure as adults and of course this plays right into the failure of the economy of countries around the world.

How can we expect our politicians, our bankers, our financial institutions, our corporations, to exhibit more accountability than we expect from our own children?

Many children, single and married, move back home into their parents' home because they cannot afford to make it on their own. At what point does a parent know that a child must learn how to survive on their own and stop taking money from their parents? At what point do parents know when they are causing more harm than good by continuing to treat their offspring as children? When they continue to make life easy for their children, these children will not know how to survive on their own when their parents die. It is far better to teach children moral and financial responsibility when they are young than have to learn it the hard way when they are older.

I had to learn this the hard way myself. My father kept on giving me money, even when I was in my 30's and I never really learned how to be independent financially. It took me telling him that I didn't need his help (even when I really did at the time), and then I learned how to stand on my own two feet and how to earn and manage money effectively.

I could go on and on giving you examples of entitlement in every strata of society, but the ones that I have cited are ample demonstrations of how we're contributing to the downfall of our economy. We're doing this on the local level, the national level and the international level. We're taking the path of least resistance and while we're holding everyone else accountable for their actions, we're taking no responsibility for our own.

It's time to reverse the status quo: Let's try an experiment: for one week, between this show and next week's show, try denying yourself something 3 times a day. Learn how to say no to yourself. Learn how to question your actions, how to observe them and question the validity of them.

Barbara Goldsmith, MBA, CeFA, Cergi, CeMAP,
Professional Financial Adviser.
She ran her own property investment company in the UK for several years before moving to New Zealand three years ago. She advises people and businesses around the world. She has her own weekly television show: Money Talks with Canterbury Television. Author of Handbook for Surviving the Global Financial Crisis available in paperback and on pdf download from Amazon, Lulu and her own website.
http://www.financemoneybusiness.com
bg@financemoneybusiness.com

Finances During and After Divorce

Once the decision to divorce has been finalized, most people pass through the stages of grief associated with the loss of a loved one. While no two people experience the same journey, we all experience the stages, with some people skipping a stage while others repeat some of the stages. Those stages are Denial, Anger and Resentment, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. You will likely experience most or all of these stages. Google the stages of grief. Understand them. Anticipate them. Make them yours, and then let them go.

Push through the pain to understand your financial condition. It's important for you to understand what that condition is, so you can be a helpful part of your legal team in looking after your best interests. No one knows better than you what is best for you, and to be a emotional wreck curled up in a fetal position won't help your future.

Like the coach on the sidelines, you are the one person responsible for guiding your team toward its goals. Your legal or accounting teams are your quarterbacks on the field, where they call plays and physically move the team. You call the shots, however. You send in the plays. You direct the Big Picture. Be involved and stay involved.

Make certain you don't put yourself into a position where you accept an unfair divorce settlement knowingly. Most partners who just want to walk away and avoid a fight usually do so at their own future peril. As tough an enormous emotional challenge as this is, see it through.

Take a financial snapshot of yourself and your situation soon after separating from your spouse. Inventory everything you own. If possible, make a video of as many possessions as you can.

Avoid mistakes. Trying to undo mistakes after the fact, especially after considerable time has passed, can be very difficult. If you give short shrift to any of the following, you run the risk of getting less than you deserve.

Create an interim budget based on what expenses you personally will need to maintain. Call this your separation budget. This budget will serve you (and any attorney) well when you begin discussing transferring assets with child support, alimony or any transfer of possessions.

Determine the fixed expenses you'll incur over the short term, which will contain housing, utilities, retirement, insurance payments or auto expenses. Make lists of expenses you'll retain, expenses your ex will retain, and expenses that may need to be negotiated.

Are there any assets that are at risk if the payments don't get paid? If so, identify them along with how long the creditor will remain open to payment. You may wish to hire a Certified Divorce Financial Analysts who can thoroughly sort out your marraital asset accumulations.

Understand the degree of liquidity of your assets, and how they relate to the current economic conditions in society. Some assets like real estate or automobile collections can be highly illiquid if market conditions are bad, or if you and your spouse disagree on a price for those assets. Know the liquidity difference between retirement accounts versus brokerage accounts.

Retirement accounts are somewhat illiquid, in that assets removed from them result in tax consequences, and if the withdrawal occurs before age 59 1/2, an IRS early withdrawal penalty.

Get a complete picture on how much cash is on hand. Make sure you include any accounts used for specific purposes (vacation, Christmas, etc).

Personal collections, which can include autos, guns and the like, can be somewhat illiquid, with valuations speculative.

When fashioning a wish list of what assets you want from the marriage, don't take on too much illiquid assets unless you're certain you can manage without being forced to sell those illiquid assets. If you get the house and he gets the cash, you could be at a disadvantage if you need to raise some cash in the future.

Assemble the marital assets according to cash flow from each. Here again, you may not want to assume assets that don't produce cash flow.

If a particular asset should be sold, is the market good or not so good? In light of depressed 2009 economic conditions, one asset may be preferable to sell over another.

Be certain to identify all assets- Leave no stone unturned. Spouses have been known to conceal assets prior to or right after a marital separation. You (or your team) will need to be sleuths to be certain all assets are included. Some are hesitant to disclose a piece of art or jewelry, but if you're forced to admit it exists and you lied to your attorney, it makes for messy relations. On occasion a forensic accountant is hired to locate missing or hidden assets, and the costs are borne by the overall aggregate in most cases.

Be certain you have copies of tax returns. They provide the basis to begin the discovery process (most people are afraid to lie to the IRS). You or your team will want to go back 5-7 on tax returns, looking for evidence of trusts, partnerships, private placements, real estate holdings, and the like.

For couple involved in a business, tax returns can expose a spouse trying to cook the books in his or her own best interest. A common ploy is to put a friend on the payroll and, for a fee, return the salary back to your spouse.

Get copies of checking and savings accounts, going back several years. Reviewing statements can reveal the transfer of money or the payment for a now hidden asset. Income and/or capital gains will also appear on one's past tax filings.

Brokerage accounts offer the same paper trail. Obtain copies of these statements going back at least 5 years.

Determine if there was ever an expense account connected with employment. Examine what was paid back and how it was categorized.

Companies often grant stock options to employees. These stock options are often listed with benefits statements from the employer. Make sure your side demands to know about any stock options and the potential value of them in the future.

Are there any children's accounts? UGMA, UTMA, 529 plans (College Savings Accounts) or other accounts? Stock dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPS)? It's wise to get copies of these account statements too, because assets can me moved around, or accounts can be liquidated and residual value returned to the parent. These accounts can be great places to park money until after the divorce.

If there were previous marriages between you two, and assets were owned before your marriage, they will likely be treated differently than marital assets. Your Financial Planner or Forensic Accountant can explain how each are treated.

Know your Insurance Policies. Home and vehicle insurance should be reviewed, and consider contacting your agent to request notice of any changes. Life insurance annuities or other insurance contracts, including business-related 2nd to Die insurance policies or Buy-Sell agreements, should be examined. If you and/or your spouse have owned a business, be sure to explore all insurance policies.

Debt and Credit Issues. Retrieve copies of your credit report from each of the three national credit-reporting agencies. Federal law allows us all to receive one free credit file per reporting agency per year. Determine your FICO score(s) and scan each file for any unrecognizable account listed on each. If it makes sense to do, consider placing locks or holds on credit files to prevent further credit being applied for. Speaking with a divorce lawyer on this one would make sense.

Close all joint accounts. Doing so early on in the separation and divorce process can get tricky. Closing them in most cases can be done just by yourself. If you close a joint bank account and remove cash, consider giving your spouse half, or less than half if you intend to reserve some cash for joint bills. As long as you retain, and spend the money fairly, you likely won't get into hot water with the court. Some might be tempted to leave more than half in the account, being considerate that your spouse will use some of it for your half of expenses. Don't assume this will happen. Many spouses will take the money, consider it all theirs, and then demand "your half".

Your marital status at year's end will determine how you file next year's taxes. Whether you file married filing jointly or married filing separately can be determined by you and your spouse, or your attorneys, but in no case should be left out of your final written agreement. Have a contingency in the final decree that should there be any penalties, interest or further taxes owed by either, that it be spelled out who pay, when they pay, and how they pay.

Retirement Accounts- Know the rules of the road. A Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO) is a court order mandating that certain assets in a retirement account be transferred from one spouse's account to the other. You need to fully understand the many tax ramifications and penalties associated with not using a QDRO or distributing from a retirement account. IRA Accounts. Regular IRAs, Roth, rollovers etc. Know how these accounts are treated tax-wise. Removing assets often involves taxes and often penalties before age 59 ½ and 70 ½. 401(k)s and 403(b)s are most often the accounts that receive QDROs.

Taxes. If there are significant assets, consider an accountant to determine what tax obligations would be incurred selling any of your assets. Knowing one asset incurs a much larger capital gain tax if sold rather than another asset may cause a decision to choose one asset over the other. If either of you were married previously, and one of you moved into your spouses home, and that home is sold, a capital gain calculation will be different than if you two bought the home together. Speak with your team to determine which tax filing status is more advantageous to you, and negotiate toward that end. Insert language that spells out exactly how an asset is to be sold, how the taxes are claimed or distributed, and how any taxes must be paid.

If you sold a home prior to 1997 and rolled that capital gain over to an existing home, and then sold that home, the old rules apply to determine the cost basis for the current capital gain amount. This would increase your gain and possibly influence when and how much you might sell the property.

After the Divorce process is completed Credit, Debt and the New You. Begin by establishing your own credit file. Federal Law requires that each credit customer be allowed one free credit report from each of the three national credit-reporting agencies. You'll want to request the file individually, but the reports will likely result in joint information. Requesting the report individually actually establishes an individual file. If you have an inadequate amount of individual credit history, you'll want to establish several accounts as soon as possible. Keep in mind that you only want credit cards that you'll actually use, so don't go crazy trying to accumulate credit cards.

Retrieve the budget you created during the early part of your divorce, and revise it based on your new circumstances. Make sure fixed costs appear there (housing, utilities, car payments, contractual payments, etc.) and include any new spending pertaining to your single needs.

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there Be flexible. Your new life, especially if it includes raising children, will offer more surprises than expectations. Remember that while you personally endured the divorce, children suffered through an event too.

Attend to beneficiary concerns. You must name them as soon as possible, because if you don't, and you die, your state will impose a will on your heirs (in testate) that can result in your wishes not going fulfilled. Wills, Trusts, retirement accounts, bank accounts and insurance contracts will need to be revised. Don't put it off.

If you haven't already, create a personal blueprint that lays out goals, wishes and aspirations you've developed over the years. Be sure to include the dreams and desires you may have developed in a marriage that didn't allow them being fulfilled.

Thomas Michael is an author and contributor to Divorce Recovery Suite