



Hey Rene:





My son’s 19th birthday is coming up and I was thinking about upgrading his cell phone to my old iPhone 3G. My mom thinks I should just buy him the new iPhone 4G. I don’t feel like that and here’s why. My son has a serious habit of LOSING THINGS; he got an iTouch last year as a Christmas gift and lost it maybe three weeks later.



He has since gotten another one but his father and I worry that he feels entitled to what he wants, when he wants it and how he wants it. I feel that getting an iPhone of any model would be great but as I stated my mother wants him to have the BEST.

So should I re-gift him my old phone or just buy him a new one?



Thanks,

America





Hi America:

Thanks so much for writing. This is an issue that is very near and dear to me as I try to inoculate my own children from what I called in my book, Good Enough Mother “the disease of affluenza”. Nowadays a phone, for teenagers especially, is as much of a necessity as it is a luxury. That being said there are some ground rules:

THE PHONE DOES NOT NEED TO BE TOP OF THE LINE: Last year, Cole lost his phone and I thought I was going to lose my mind as everyday was a scramble with me trying to hunt him down after school. He wanted a replacement phone just like the one he lost. The answer to that was a big, fat no! I ended up finding a phone that was laying around the house from someone else’s upgrade and that is what he used. It was not fancy, it was not new, but when you turned that sucker on you got a dial tone and it worked. All he needed was some way to contact me and vice versa. Which leads right to my next point…

YOUR SON NEEDS TO LEARN THE VALUE OF MONEY AND MERCHANDISE: I remember my very first car that I bought myself. It was an old, beat up Toyota Corolla, but I cared for that vehicle like it was a fresh-of–the-lot Maserratti! You know why? Because every month, 115 bucks of my hard earned cash went to the bank to pay off the note. I knew that at $3.35 an hour I had to work 34 hours to earn enough to make that payment. I treated it well because it was the manifestation of my labor and it was all I had.

The same goes for your son; he needs to understand that an iPhone at a cost of $100 is equal to 20 hours of work at 5 bucks an hour. I also think some of this has to do with the fact that kids never see actual cash being spent. We use debit cards, credit cards; heck these kids think the money grows inside an ATM! Maybe using more of the green and less of the plastic would help as well.

MESSAGE TO YOUR MOM: BUTT OUT! Okay this is much easer said than done and honestly something that my own mother and I squabble about. But the bottom line is your son has ONE MOTHER and that is you. Therefore, she can say whatever she wants but the decision is yours and your son’s father. In fact, you may have to say that or something along those lines (in a nice respectful way). It’s easy for them to see the situation differently and sometimes with more clarity because they are not intimately involved. And because they want the best for us they want to “help out.” But this really is your decision and she needs to be respectful of that and understand her role, which is grandmother not primary caregiver. And out of curiosity, what type of phone did she buy you when you were growing up? I’d ask her!

An iPhone, even a hand me down, is a really nice device. I would explain to your son that given his past history with electronic devices, you are going to let him test drive your old/his new phone. If he handles it well and does not lose it in a year, then when the contract is up you can revisit whether it’s time to get him a top of the line, brand new iPhone. Another option is that if he decides he wants the new phone now, you can work a deal where you can turn in the old one and he pays the difference on the new one. That way he is at least financially invested and (we hope) less likely to lose it.

Good luck!

Best

Rene

Do you have a question for Rene? She always has an answer. Click here and fire away!