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are finally getting it. More Americans are paying down their debt; we are, sometimes painfully, facing up to the consequences of rash financial behavior; we are starting to learn what it means to stand in the truth. I am hopeful that on a large scale and individually we are recognizing the virtues and integrity of the generations who came before us, who understood what it meant to save, to sacrifice, to set a goal and work diligently and selflessly to achieve it. I speak to so many of you—at my lectures, in the course of producing my TV show, via email and social networks—and I am encouraged to see that there seems to be a new maturity, a new sobriety taking hold. That is a sea change, the beginning of a paradigm shift, that has occurred in the span of just a few years. With that promise in our hearts, let’s head into the Family Class.
    I have organized the Family Class into the following lessons:
     
How to Build Honest Family Relations
How to Raise Young Children to Stand in the Truth
How to Create a Financially Honest College Strategy
How to Help Adult Children Facing Financial Challenges
The Conversation Every Adult Child Should Have with His or Her Parents
Advice for Grandparents: How to Build a Lasting Legacy
    LESSON 1. HOW TO BUILD HONEST FAMILY RELATIONS
    One of the great mysteries to me is how we have convinced ourselves that it is okay to lie to our loved ones.
    When your credit card balance is full of purchases you made because your kids asked for something, you are in fact lying to yourself and your kids about what your family can honestly afford.
    When you loan your sister money to cover her chronic shortfalls and that money depletes your emergency fund, you are lying to yourself and your sister that you can afford to help her—or that you are in fact helping her by enabling her irresponsible behavior.
    When you tell your kids to focus on getting into the best college and not worry about the cost, even though you will have to spend your retirement savings to cover the bills, you are not being honest with them about the sacrifices you are prepared to make. What you are doing, in effect, is mortgaging their future. Who, after all, will you have to lean on in retirement if you haven’t planned well, but your children?
    When your parents need financial help and your siblings assume you will take care of anything because you make the most money, and you participate in this disproportionate share of responsibility, you are encouraging a financial codependence that will surely lead to conflict and animosity. That is a shared dishonesty.
    Your rationale for behavior of this sort seems so irrefutably pure and right: love. You give, and give, and give out of love. No questions asked. Because that is what family is all about.
    I want you to know how sensitive I am to the good intentions behind all these choices. But there is no way to build sustainable dreams on a foundation of financial dishonesty.
    OPEN THE LINES OF COMMUNICATION
    Having taught you to stand in your truth in the second class, I am now going to ask that you go public with your truth. Bring everyone in your family on board, because we are always stronger and more successful in reaching our goals when we have the support and encouragement of our loved ones. But you must also open the lines of communication and share your financial truths because they will in many cases have a direct impact on your family. How you explain to a ten-year-old child why you will not be sending him to sleepaway camp this year is obviously different than how you express to your adult siblings your desire to change the gift-giving traditions in your family. But both conversations are a must. If you fail to communicate you leave it to those around you to fill in the backstory. That can be especially dangerous with children, who will think it is somehow their fault, or that they are being punished. A lack of communication also creates distance between you and your loved ones.