Parents, forget saving or borrowing money to send your kid to college. You'll be paying through the nose the rest of your life.
Start now, when they are young, and teach them to be a capitalist. Why? Everything revolves around money. No, you say?
OK, let's say you're some person against the killing of torch ginger, you want to press a lawsuit, you need funds to go to court, unless your attorney takes these cases for free, which he does not, somehow he's going to get some. You're a Hawaiian activist, so you'll need funds too to print your "I like my aina back!" T-shirts. You belong to a softball team taking a trip to Hilo? Money. Your kid wants to go to some camp in South America for some cultural thing? Again, money.
Teach your kid how to be a hustler, teach him the facts about bottom-line thinking, teach him about costs and profit margins, teach him how this world really works. Art? Forget it. Sports? Teach him how to be the agent. Teach him that money is good. Money can get things.
Sure, save a tree and save Honolua Bay is all fine and dandy, but man, money is leverage.
And don't give me any flak. Your tutu needs medicine? It doesn't come gift-wrapped. You need gas? Last I heard it cost some dollars. You say, "Live off the land"? OK, do it without any modern-day devices then you come talk to me.
Ron Sambrano
Lahaina
