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Pete @ BibleMoneyMatters recently had a good article ("Family and Money: Do You Share Your Financial Situation with Family?") that referenced one of my posts on the same subject, and one of the statements in his article has been eating at my hindbrain ever since.

... My wife's family are all very successful, and because of that I think that sometimes it can get into a bit of the "who's more successful than who" game. I tend to shy away from sharing with those competitive family members because I don't want to get into the comparison game and start hearing the "if you did this you could be as successful as me" monologues.

This saddens me a little bit, that even though Pete and his family are doing very well by most standards, he still has to put up with 'comparisons' from the family. Just because he's not AS successful as the in-laws, doesn't mean he's not successful. These kind of comparisons have always seemed particularly unfair to me.

Comparing Apples to Oranges

In my own situation, I'm much more successful that most people on EITHER side of the family, but I've always tried to not advertise that fact (except during one particularly intense family 'discussion' years ago) for this very reason. I don't want comparisons to come up about me and my family vs. the rest of the family.

I can understand that parents want their children to do at least as well as they did, that's just the American Way. What most parents don't seem to get, until after they've already started 'helping' their children, is that it's not a fair comparison or goal.

The parents have the benefit of decades more experience and time to have gotten to the position they're in, but when they talk to their children, they conveniently forget that fact. Being successful in business, or acquiring any significant amount of wealth usually involves investing more than a bit of time. With the parents having the benefit of a couple more decades of time on their side they should be more successful than their children normally.

They also forget that THEY ARE NOT THEIR CHILDREN. Your child might not want to grow up to do what you do or be what you are. Is that a bad thing? From the children's point of view, that almost immediately sets them up for failure. No one becomes a success overnight, and no one ever does it without experiencing some bad times in the process. I can remember some bad spots I went through that a little 'help' from my parents would have been sorely appreciated, but didn't approach them (or even let them know about my problems) for fear of being diminished in their eyes. My home foreclosure, for instance, could probably have been averted with a couple of thousand dollars loaned to me by my parents, which I could have paid back. But that didn't happen. I was too obsessed with my 'reputation' in their eyes to take that option. Foreclosure and financial disaster was preferable to my parents thinking I was a failure.

Making Sure Apples are Apples

I hope that I remember this when my own children get old enough to leave the house and strike out for their own successes, but somehow I doubt it. I want what's best for my kids, and I want to save them from making the same mistakes I did, but I have to remember, the best lessons learned are from the things you do wrong, not the things you do right. I'd like to say that I'll remember that when they start making their own mistakes.

What I WILL remember is that success is defined differently for everyone. One person's lifetime goal to climb Mount Everest is another person's wasted vacation. I doubt that Bill Gate's kids will be able to define success by the amount of money they earn in their lives. They will have to decide different criteria for what makes them a success.

My own idea of success has changed as time goes on too. Money has moved from being a goal, to being a tool. It's taken years, and it still isn't complete, but my self-worth and self-image is not based on what I make or what I do, but who I am.

I'm still learning about that.

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