The Opposite of Spoiled

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

By: Ron Lieber

Narrated by: 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

good variety of situations and suggestions

loved this book. I am a new mom. I was not into allowance and my husband is. I never received an allowance and have worked for all my income. my husband argued his way into an allowance with his parents. I am ok with $, my husband is terrible. this book opened my eyes to many new ideas. I am now open for discussion about allowance with my husband. We hope that our child will learn to be a responsible adult. Want to teach him good monetary and ethical values.

I have already starting implementing these techniques with my kids and they work!

A must-read book for families. I came home every day after listening to the book on my commute and discussed the principles and ideas with my wife. We have already starting implementing them with our two young children and we can see the benefits already.

One thing to note: there are so many good reference materials that it almost makes more sense to have this in hard copy, even if you rarely read hard copy books. I’ll probably buy it just to have the copy.

Great advice

This book was great advice for teaching our kids a about money. Start today. Great insight and perspectives

Practical ideas on how to raise financially aware and balanced kids

It was easy to listen to. It might just need a refresher to make examples more applicable.

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.

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.

Good starting point for money conversation

There are many different stories from families of different incomes that can be shared and discussed with kids of all ages. this book has been a useful tool for my family.