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Today's question comes from Alexandra in Arizona. My 14-year-old daughter claims that all the kids in school...

Dude, we just... I just had this in my house. My 14-year-old daughter claims that all the kids in school are buying lunches from local eateries and spending as much as 20 bucks a day on takeout food rather than bringing their lunch. Not a lot at our school. No outside takeout food. Keep going. My wife and I are on baby step two and have another $65,000 to go. We simply cannot afford this.

How do I explain to this to my 14 year old without, in her words, making her feel poor?

I think underneath all of this, I'm just going to tell you, Rachel, how I experience this.

Very similar.

The school my son goes to has an extraordinary cafeteria and i for me and

Sheila it's less about the finances and it's more about i want him to participate in food um creation and

food consumption i want him to know that food just doesn't materialize out of

thin air, right? And so that may, that's a little, little house on the prairie for us, I know, but.

So you don't let him buy from the cafeterias? That's right. So he has to be a part of making his

food. And so underneath this, though, I struggled with my kid's the only one.

And so I think, Alexandra, it's less about you worrying about your 14-year-old feeling poor,

and it's more about you feeling guilty that your 14-year-old has any sort of uncomfortable feelings.

And that's where you need to deal with this.

So if you can't afford it, then the way you

go straight into that is sitting down with your daughter and letting her walk through your budget

with you. She's 14. She's a freshman high school. She can do that. And you look at her and say,

we're working really hard to change our family tree. We don't have enough money. And by the way,

for a 14 year old, they don't care.

They're going to have feelings. They're going to get mad. Oh my gosh, we're poor.

Let a 14 year old say 14 year old things. There's a reason as a society we have all said 14 year olds can't buy beer and cigarettes and guns. Because they're 14. The other side of that is

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