The Journey 125
Saturday, May 5
Read: Genesis 25
Does Your Birth Order Affect Your Finances?:  This was an interesting piece of article that came on Bankrate.com. According to Derrick Kinney, a financial adviser at Derrick Kinney & Associates in Arlington, Texas, says your birth order can affect your relationship with money, and finances and especially how good your credit scores are. His logic of argument is based on what  Dr. Soroya Bacchus, a psychiatrist based in Los Angeles says about prominent traits of each of the children in the family. According to Bachus, “The eldest are normally the most responsible ones and hence they are organized. This makes them punctual about paying bills because they love to be seen as stable and dependable, they won't let financial details like payment due dates and avoiding unnecessary over-the-limit fees fall through the cracks." But all that perfectionism and drive of being the first in the birth order can backfire. "More often than not, being a perfectionist leads to burnout and giving up or setting unrealistic financial goals," says Kinney. Middle children are inventive, natural problem-solvers. They grow up thinking they can handle anything themselves, including money problems," says Bacchus. This sometimes makes them prone to secrecy. They tend to have the need to cover up, or ignore financial troubles like  hiding  financial secrets such as unpaid bills and accounts sent to collection from their spouses. They believe they can fix the problem themselves. Finally Bacchus says the babies of the family are very social and tend to prioritize dinners out with friends, regularly takes trips to the mall and has no problem spending. This leaves little or no money to pay bills. It's tough for those youngest in the birth order to spot these activities as the first ones to avoid when in a budget crisis, says Kinney. "Parents often dote on the youngest children, so they're conditioned to rely on others. They get into financial trouble because they can't handle responsibility and may even believe someone will fix their financial problems if their parents have paid bills for them," says Bacchus. This piece of article for me is more of a hypothesis, which may occur in a family or may not occur. But whatever be your birth order in the family I believe the presence and the role of the children surely affects the environment and the transformation that has to take place in the family.
                         This week we are meditating on the theme “ Transformation in the family” based on the family life of Isaac and Rebekah. Does the birth order of the children of Isaac and Rebekah affected their family functioning? In Genesis 25: 19– 27, describes the birth of Jacob and Esau. When Esau was born he had hair all over his body, but when Jacob was born, he was holding on to Esau’s heel, thus he was called Jacob. Late we read that in v:27 that as they grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field, but Jacob was peaceful and lived in tents. Two brothers who struggled together when they were in the womb, and later as they grew up developing distinct personalities and vocations of their own. But it is from v: 28 that we find the dysfunctioning of the family being told. “ Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for a game but Rebekah loved Jacob. Here is the root cause of the dysfunctioning of the family. I believe the transformation and the effective functioning of the family is not based on ones birth order, but on the contrary how well we as children and parents play the divine role and responsibility that God has entrusted to us in the family. There are times in the family where responsibility can be divided so that each of the child in the family and the spouses have equal responsibility. But today we live in times when one of the parents put the entire responsibility of the family on the other or one of the sibling put the responsibility of looking after ones parents on the other siblings. Washing my hands off the role and responsibility of the family is what hampers the smooth functioning of the family. Transformation in the family is all about each member of the family being responsible to the role that he/she  has been given in the context of the family.
Whatever be our birth order, if we don't discharge our role and responsibility in the family then it will surely affect the way our family functions.