Have a stepson who is paying off college loans after finishing his masters degree last spring and working in Busan, S. Korea.. He lives in a studio apartment and hired someone to clean his apt and do his wash ! He's going to Bali over the holidays ! He doesn't understand spending $10 daily at Starbucks is $3650 annually.
Obviously we have no interest helping him with his student loans or where he will live when he returns or how he will afford a car and housing.

I grew up on Video games....I was probably 6 or 7 when Nintendo hit the store...My brother and I probably had 100 games between us..

We still spent more time outside hunting, fishing, playing baseball, basketball, etc then we did in front on the game station. We played video games at night or when it was cold too outside to be doing anything out there..

By the time I was 16, I had pretty much given up on video games...The Car and girls were way more important. I couldn't wait to get my drivers license...I see kids today that have no interest in obtaining their DL and I don't understand it...I have a friend who's kid only got one at 19 before he went to college, and wouldn't have got it if he could have gotten away with it...

Today I'm am 36 with 2 kids....We have 3 playstations in the house, and Xbox, and a Wii. 2 Ipads, a couple ipods, and iphones...

The gaming systems do not see a lot of use, mostly used for video streaming at night or during the winter months. Both my kids spend ample time outside playing with neighborhood kids. Probably more time then they do in front of the TV. Both play basketball and the boy plays baseball, the daughter is a cheerleader and loves it even though I'm not sure she is really cut out for it. (I'm not one of those parents that think my kids are the best at everything) When they don't get the playing time in sports that they think they deserve and mope around about it, I tell them they need to work harder and I think they playing time they are seeing is rather generous given what I have seen out of the kids that are playing. When my son was playing football I watched one mom call the coach on the sideline and tell him to put her kid in..It was the craziest thing I have ever seen and I let her know what I thought about it. My kid was riding the pine too (where he should have been) and her kid was no better. They pulled their kid from the team a couple weeks later, and the next year he was on a different team that his father coached and he played all the time...I found it comical....This is the problem with today's age...Mommy and Daddy fight for there kid, think they deserve a ribbon for everything, and then wonder why they can't succeed on their own.

I am trying to raise my kids how I imagined my parents were raised 50 years ago. You have to earn it if you want it, and you are not the best at everything...Better them learn that lesson at a young age then to have reality smack them in the face after school..They may despise me for it a bit now, but I hope when they are older, they will thank me for it...

Thankfully a few of these later posts sound like what I consider normal people. Many kids I hear today just want to get others to "do the work" so they can be "rich" and "buy the stuff I want". I say a lot of so called rich are not as happy as us self sufficient types that get satisfaction doing our own repairs and upgrades. But of course it helps to be able to bring home a little cash... to get parts you know...

I've always said if you job pays more then what you create/build/repair on you own in the same time you would be crazy to not just do your job and pay for it. But once you understand what the true cost is (not the inflated retail version) there is not many jobs that pay that much and I've never had one.

Guys on the internet complaining that the kids spend too much time on the internet... haha

well I can say for myself I grew up on little 14ft aluminium fishing boats with my parents and loved every aspect of it. Once I started working interest wavered in boating, I was way too busy spending all my bar tending money on beer and restaurants! About a year after joining the army (at 25) I was fortunate enough to get posted to some of the best boating water in Ontario and bought my current boat brand new while everybody around me was telling me I was stupid for spending that kind of money on a toy (same people who owned 2 quads 2 sleds lots of guns and a giant truck and sports car and they said I was going to go broke and stupid for buying a 36grand boat....).

Fast forward to today, wife, mortgage, 2 kids with a third on the way, Canadian gas prices.... I'm thankful that the boat has been paid for for quite a while since I would not have the money to drop on it and live withing a great boating community that does not judge on the social status of someone. If I was posted to an area where the boating was not as good or the boat ramp was 2 hours away I would probably find another hobby(god forbid!!!!)

Not a weekend goes by where the kids don't want to go out on the water and hang on the beach and not a sunny warm day goes by where I don't think about going out. Its an absolute obsession for me and the kids (wife not so much but she enjoys it).

unfortunately the next boat will not be the 30ft go fast that I have always dreamed of but will be more along the ways of a nice house boat with the Fourwinns tied to the side and hopefully with a nice well massaged 400hp small block on it by then to give me the go fast I want on a budget!

ummm its called boating in North america and winter.....

its called winter....

I call BS. Canada doesn't have an army.

Strange... who has been paying my salary for the past 12 years and who's uniform have I been wearing....