To keep pace with the rapidly decreasing supply of hourly workers amidst this devastating labor shortage, a growing number of fast food restaurant chains are now offering early wage paychecks and even same-day pay for part-time employees, according to this article in Bloomberg.
In spite of higher salaries and the lowest unemployment in five decades, nearly 80% of American workers are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Employers hope this new expedited pay perk will appear as an attractive incentive to lure teens and young adults — most who have grown up watching their parents battle credit card debt and have been raised with the ‘gotta have it now’ mentality — to unsexy jobs.
And while this tactic seems to be effective in meeting its stated objective, there is a significant downside.
If the emerging workforce does not learn to manage money and live within their means in their first jobs, odds are, they never will.
Thankfully, I was raised by depression-era parents who engrained financial restraint into my psyche.
From the time I started getting .50 per week for allowance in exchange for doing chores around the house, my parents mandated that I save a nickel of that for college, save a nickel to buy gifts for others, put one nickel in the offering plate on Sunday, and put a nickel away in my piggy bank. The remaining 60% of my allowance was then mine to spend on whatever I chose.
Now some 50+ years later, those powerful lessons are still with me.
With the exception of a mortgage, I seldom purchase anything for which I cannot pay cash.
I’ve learned to do without a lot of things that a merchant would have gladly sold me on monthly terms, but I’ve never once felt deprived.
This pandemic ‘buy now and pay later’ virus that’s so deeply infiltrated our society has destroyed careers, families, and lives. I’ve seen it wreak havoc on my own family and some very close friends.
Granted, college tuition and housing costs have risen faster than incomes, …but not as fast as stupidity and financial illiteracy.
Instead of offering same-day pay, businesses would be far wiser to offer free money management courses to their young employees.
Lord knows their parents and schools have failed them miserably in this capacity.
ON POINT – While the economy is in a radically different place than it was in the 70s, the fundamentals of economics are exactly the same. I still firmly believe that a teenager who takes on a part-time minimum wage job, shows up regularly and works diligently, and has the guts to forgo some expensive luxuries their friends have to save for their future can get to adulthood with a decent education, minimal or no debt, and a chance to make an impact in the world.
