Have I made my children’s childhood too good?

A few weeks into our family holiday in the Philippines, I found myself worrying about something rather ridiculous.

My boys had spent the morning surfing.

They've also learned to scuba dive on this trip. They can already ski. By the time they were five, I suspect they'd been on more aeroplanes than I had by 25.

And, like all children, they can still complain about having to go surfing.

‍I have written before about the absurdity of expecting children to appreciate how fortunate they are. This is simply their reality. They don't have another childhood to compare it to.

But this time I found myself worrying about something different.

What if their childhood is better than their adult life?

Every generation wants their children to do better than they did.

But what exactly does better mean?

What if they can't recreate it?

Every couple of years, we take a longer family holiday.

It's something we deliberately build into our lives and our financial planning. It gives us an extended period together that isn't possible during normal working life.

But sitting in the Philippines, I started projecting forward.

What happens when the boys are 28?

They might be earning perfectly respectable salaries and still be unable to afford many of the things they experienced routinely as children.

Perhaps 6 weeks away will be impossible. Perhaps skiing will seem outrageously expensive. Perhaps buying a home near us will feel out of reach.

Had I inadvertently created a benchmark for a good life that they might spend adulthood failing to reach?

It's an extraordinarily privileged problem to worry about. But I suspect quite a few parents who have become more financially successful than their own parents quietly think about it.

Research into affluent children suggests that money itself isn't necessarily the problem. Psychologist Suniya Luthar's work has linked poorer wellbeing more closely with excessive achievement pressure and emotional isolation.

Perhaps the danger isn't giving children good experiences.

Perhaps it's teaching them that continued achievement, income and lifestyle are the measure of whether their life is going well.

But there's a paradox here too. I came to another conclusion on this trip.

I want them to experience a version of financial reality, not poverty, but the kind of life where money has limits, choices have to be made, and things have to be worked out.

There is something genuinely useful about having to learn through improvising, waiting and saving.

‍What actually made this holiday valuable?

Then I realised something else. The boys' surfing lessons here cost roughly £8 an hour.

Obviously getting to the Philippines is expensive. But getting here wasn't really the valuable part.

The valuable part was that we went surfing together.

We learned things. We played together. We laughed. We spent huge amounts of time in one another's company.

And you don't need to fly halfway around the world to do that.

Research into happiness points in a similar direction: people who prioritise time spent with friends and family over money tend to report greater wellbeing.

That makes sense.

Most of the things we say we want money for aren't actually money.

They're time.

They're freedom.

They're choices.

They're people.

My wife Jane claims to have almost no interest in finance.

But when I ask what she wants financially, she'll say something like:

"I'd like the boys to be able to buy a home in the South East one day, so they can live near us if they want to."

That is one of the most convincing financial objectives I have ever heard.

But the motivation isn't money.

The motivation is about family, about keeping people close, about having choices about how your life is arranged.

This is true of an enormous amount of financial planning.

People rarely want £2 million because having £2 million is intrinsically exciting.

They want what they believe the money will enable.

Perhaps that's how I should think about what we're eventually trying to give our children too.

I don't need to create enough wealth for them to reproduce their childhood indefinitely.

I don't particularly want to.

I'd like to give them some security and some choices. I'd like to help with things that may genuinely be difficult, such as buying a home.

But I also want them to build something themselves.

To be a little bit broke.

To try things.

To get things wrong.

To spend years becoming good at something.

And eventually to discover what money is actually useful for.

If the boys understand that when they're adults, their lives won't need to be bigger or more expensive than their childhood.

They just need to work out what makes them happy and how much they need for that life. 

And not a penny more.

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