The Opposite of Spoiled

Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money

De: Ron Lieber

Narrado por: Ron Lieber

We may not realize it, but children are hyperaware of money. They have scores of questions about its nuances that parents often don't answer, or know how to answer well. But for Ron Lieber, a personal finance columnist and father, good parenting means talking about money with our kids much more often. When parents avoid these conversations, they lose a tremendous opportunity—not just to model important financial behaviors, but also to imprint lessons about what their family cares about most.

Written in a warm, accessible voice, grounded in real-world stories from families with a range of incomes, The Opposite of Spoiled is a practical guidebook for parents that is rooted in timeless values. Lieber covers all the basics: the best ways to handle the tooth fairy, allowance, chores, charity, savings, birthdays, holidays, cell phones, splurging, clothing, cars, part-time jobs, and college tuition. But he also identifies a set of traits and virtues—like modesty, patience, generosity, and perspective—that parents hope their young adults will carry with them out into the world.

In The Opposite of Spoiled, Ron Lieber delivers a taboo-shattering manifesto that will help every parent embrace the connection between money and values to help them raise young adults who are grounded, unmaterialistic, and financially wise beyond their years.

©2015 Ron Lieber (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers

Eye opening and well written!

As a parent and step parent to 5 kids, this book reaffirmed how I feel kids should be raised with regard to money. We are in the adult-making business and this is an excellent guide to doing it right!

Good habits and good parenting

Even more thorough, researched and real world in easy to understand teaching than I had hoped. Thanks for the tools!

Good info

Good information. Brought up several interesting discussions with my husband about our unborn child. Seemed to be well researched.

Good listen but not too much in depth information

The narrator was the author and the reading was mostly fluid. The beginning and middle of the book seemed on target and informative but strayed at the end with too much on giving and charities. For me, I think the book was worth the audible credit but I would not pay cash for it.

This book does provide many suggestions for answering common kids question concerning money so it accomplishes what it says it does.

I will probably give this a second listen to remember the responses better.

A great listen for all parents

This book really helped our thinking about money and how we deal with it with our kids.

Great book to read and re-read as kids grow

All parents should read or listen to this every few years. It has many broad conceptual points as well as specific "how to" examples to help parents raise good children.

Excellent advice and suggestions

Details on the best way to offer income to children to show how to be responsible with it.

What a great set of ideas

Ron did a great (and balanced) job of discussing how to help our kids and ourselves with the money topic. I have 2 adult sons and a 6 year old so we are doing the parenting thing again and trying to learn from our mistakes (even through the boys are fine productive adults). I am starting with the jars and 6 dollars a week in allowance. Will share the ideas with my fellow parents. Thanks for all the great examples and ideas.

NYC POV

Most of the time when the author is the narrator I don't enjoy it unless the author is a character. Ron Lieber is a writer for the New York Times and I don't think I've read his column before and I don't see myself reading it in the future.
There is very little wrong with the book but I didn't enjoy it but luckily it was short enough that I was able to plow through it in two short bursts.
The point of view, and this is probably why I didn't enjoy the book, was it had a conversational tone of a white agnostic upper middle class Mahattanite New Yorker. I've listened to other audiobooks by journalists about children and though they were also upper middle class and some agnostic-maybe, I didn't find them too alien.
I guess it would have helped to have been more familiar with Lieber's articles before getting the book to get the tone, as some journalists' books are just an extended long playing version of their articles.
I didn't hate it. I just didn't like it.

Concepts are very worthwhile

but once you get the basics early on, you might find the anecdotes a bit repetitive.