Preparing Sons: Chapter 11 - Part 2

The first post on this chapter covered Maxwell's wild and crazy views on how to control a son even after he's graduated high school.  I'm not sure how effective those ideas are especially if the son has been prepared enough that he's ready to enter the workforce even at a minimum wage job.  Either way, I saved a subsection of the chapter for a separate post.  This section shares Maxwell's obsession with purchasing a house debt-free along with his exceptionally optimistic views on the amount of earned income for first-time business owners.

Maxwell's views on debt-free homes is that owning a home debt-free prevents white-collar crime:

Is the ability to purchase a home debt-free a good goal for sons? Think about what a burden rent or mortgage payments are. They pressure men to work in places where Christians should not be employed. I have known men, under tremendous financial pressure due to their mortgage, who participated in unethical and illegal business dealings. Concern over loss of income should never hold a Christian to a job with which his Lord would not be pleased. (pg. 166)

As a counter-example, the only person I know who was tried for defrauding the state multiple millions of dollars was a man who earned seven figures who married a woman who had a healthy savings account from years of working in science industry.  They owned a lovely home outright.  I won't pretend I understand exactly why the man decided to inflate the number of students that attended our school (which took a good deal of work including creating records for imaginary students and populating classes of imaginary students), but I've always chalked it up to a combination of greed and hubris.  He received some hefty bonuses based on the growth of our school and he had massive narcissistic tendencies.  If I used Maxwell's line of logic, I should argue that buying a house outright leads inexorably to fraud instead of putting the blame on the illegal choices my boss made.

Maxwell discusses slightly the weight that a mortgage or rent payments put on a worker while ignoring the burden that owning a house places on that same worker.   People lose jobs.  Companies fold, downsize and relocate.  Entire industries do the same thing.  I've lived in Michigan my whole life; when a manufacturing sector declines, there's a massive migration of people out of the state and lots of people moving around in the state.  The industry workers leave first, followed by human service providers and businesses that were supported by the workers' incomes.  It happened in the late 1970's, the early 2000's and the early 2010's.   Owning a home narrows the area where a worker can easily access a job without selling their home and potentially makes the worker less attractive to businesses where the worker will have a long commute.   

If a worker cannot get a job within commuting distance, they have to move.  This adds an another layer of stress and financial demands on a family already in hardship.  Trying to sell a house in an economically depressed area is hard; there are plenty of other houses up for sale of similar quality which depresses prices.  In really bad times, the market values are depressed further by the presence of homes which have been foreclosed on.  The location that the family is moving to is generally in a more competitive real estate market so it's quite possible for the family to have to lose half of their investment on their original home and need to take out a mortgage on their new home.

Teri and I would have loved to provide our children with homes according to Proverbs 19: 14, "House and riches are the inheritance of fathers; and a prudent wife is of the Lord." Unfortunately, we are nowhere near being able to do that. However, we can provide them with room and board for as long as it takes them to save up for their house. Even then it is our desire that they will continue living with us until God provides them a spouse. (pg. 166)

I cannot figure out why Steven Maxwell interprets that verse to mean that fathers should give houses to their sons; if that was the proverb, it would state "Houses and riches are the inheritance of sons..." My understanding of that proverb is that married men who have living children and a prudent wife are economically farther ahead in subsistence agrarian societies.  My interpretation is a no-brainer...but most proverbs are simply pithy statements of general societal trends anyways.

More problematically is the fact that Maxwell blithely assumes that parents can afford to house and feed all of their offspring prior to marriage.   I really doubt that most CP/QF families can do that to the point that the Maxwells do. The Maxwells have eight kids spaced across 20 years supported by a father who had a Bachelor's degree in Engineering.  The oldest three kids were working in external or family businesses by the time the youngest girl started preschool.  Compare that with the 19 children born in the same time frame to the Duggar or the Bates family to self-employed parents.  Additionally, the Maxwells have five sons and only three daughters.  Since CP/QF boys are allowed to work outside the home, the Maxwells have had more children who could support themselves (at least partially) by their late teens.  The Coghlan family of the defunct blog "In A Shoe" has eight daughters and three sons; the seven oldest children are daughters. Trying to support 7 adult daughters until they got married is much more challenging than supporting three adult daughters as the Maxwells do now.

If a young man has been prepared well during high school, he should fairly easily be able to earn $35,000 or more a year when he graduates. Start with a yearly income and then subtract tithes, offerings, and taxes. Then money must be put aside for transportation, insurance - medical and auto, and other incidental expenses. If your son is frugal, he should be able to save 50% or slightly more of its income while living at home. (pg. 166)

I had to stop for a minute or two to stop laughing so hard I was crying.  After I could see again, I hit the internet to double-check my instinct.  In 2001, the median income for men who completed high school without college experience was $34,723.   That figure includes men at the beginning, middle and end of their careers; using it as an estimate for what a recent high school graduate could expect is unrealistically high.    For comparison, I began teaching in 2006 for ~$27,000 a year (plus benefits).

This is where Maxwell begins using magic math.  Through the rest of the topic, he behaves as if $35,000 in sales from a personal business is the same thing as $35,000 in personal income.  It's not because Maxwell forgets about removing business expenses from the total in sales.  I'm extremely skeptical that all taxes, health insurance, auto insurance for a late teenage or early 20's man, and all of the incidental expenses that come with a job/career like clothing, haircuts, networking experiences etc, take less than 50% of a man's income.     

Within six years from high school graduation, your 24 year old son will have saved $100,000, not counting any appreciable interest. I find that very exciting. If he earned less than 35,000 a year, it just means he must save a little longer.(pg. 166)

Here's a more realistic scenario.  I worked at Meijers as a cashier for between $8-12 dollars an hour during that time period.  I worked full-time (or close to it) during the summer months and during Thanksgiving through New Years.  The remainder of the year, I worked between 6-20 hours a week depending on the amount of available shifts.  I made roughly $16,000 per year before taxes and "saved" around $7,500 which I used in real time to pay for college.. 

Now, I passed up some shifts due to attending college - but I also cross-trained in the Men's/Shoes, Cosmetics, Pharmacy and Garden Center so I could pick up more shifts during slow periods.  If I hadn't been in college, I think I could have increased my number of hours across the year by about 30% at most because there's a seasonal dead time in January through April followed by a shorter one in late September through October where shifts were hard to find for love or money.  Assuming that I could save at the same rate, I'd make $20,080 before tax saving $9,750 per year.   My expenses were a little different because my parents covered my health insurance and I didn't have a car so I didn't need automotive insurance outside of a rider on my parents' policy but I did pay room and board to college so I think it about evens out in the end.

Saving $100,000 would have taken me 10.25 years at that rate.  There's no way my parents would have wanted me living at home from when I was 18 until I was 28 in hopes of buying my own home immediately. 

In case the math scared any of the readers, Maxwell immediately moves the goal posts for a home purchase:

Depending on the location, size, and age of the house your son will purchase, he might not even need $100,000. There's so many possibilities and intriguing options, but nothing happens unless a son has a vision, and you help him prepare. (pgs. 166-167)

Yes and no.  Michigan, like most of the Midwest, has low housing prices compared to either coast.  I grew up in an area of mostly starter homes and live in a fairly depressed area of rural home prices.   I have a hard time finding a home now that was under $100,000.   My first apartment was 600 square feet with one bedroom.  I can find homes for sale right now that are 700-800 square feet with two bedrooms and one bathroom in both areas - but they are selling for $110,00-$130,000.

I'm sure I could find cheaper homes if I was willing to purchase a foreclosed home at an auction - but those homes often need a lot of work.  In the best case scenario, the home was well-maintained upto the point that the home was surrendered to the bank and had minimal damage during the period it was uninhabited.  Here's a worst case scenario. A family down the block from us had a house foreclosed on when I was a kid.  We met the poor souls who bought the house sight unseen.  They purchased a home that had been occupied by animal hoarders who apparently decided to destroy everything they could on their way out.    The house had to be stripped down to the studs and built back up again - including new electrical to replace the parts ripped out and new plumbing.    I don't know what they purchased the house for - but they spent a ton more than that making the house habitable again.

I want to encourage you with the possibilities for your own son. If a father says, "My son isn't involved with computers and can't make that much money," my question for him is, "Do you think your son could learn to handle commercial lawn mower?" I think you will agree that most sons are capable of running a lawn mower.

Mark, a recent high school graduate, has his own lawn mowing business. It is nothing fancy, just one man with a commercial, walk behind mower. I spoke with him on his mobile phone and he was about to start on another lawn. I asked him if he thought a young man could clear 35,000 a year by mowing lawns. He chuckled and said,"Yes, pretty easily in fact!" Then he pointed out that income came from mowing lawns for only 5 months, during the growing season. (pg. 167)

Mmm-kay. 

I agree that most adult humans can learn to run a lawn mower.  We're not setting the bar real high here, are we?

I agree that random guy named Mark that Steven Maxwell knows believes that someone could theoretically earn $35,000 a year.  I'd like to point out that Mark never says that he earns that much - just that he thinks it is possible. 

Right now, the internet tells me that people who hire a lawn service expect to pay $80-100 per mowing for a suburban size lawn.  My lawn is a bit over an acre and would be closer to $150 per mowing.  We have a 5 month mowing season and let's assume people want their lawn mowed 8 times during that period.  That's around $800 per suburban yard and $1,200 per rural yard.  To clear $35,000 in sales, that means a teenage CP/QF home school graduate (who may not know anyone in his neighborhood) would need to have 44 suburban clients or 30 rural clients. 

Let's discuss the pitfalls that spring to mind:

• No one in the area I grew up used a lawn service.  It was too expensive for a chore that young working families could do on their own.  CP/QF kids in blue-collar suburban areas are out of luck.
• No one in the area I live in now uses a lawn service.  Everyone owns a self-propelled lawn mower except me.  (I'm the oddball who uses a reel mower on an acre lawn.  I enjoy the exercise and the look of horror on people's faces...)  CP/QF kids in rural areas are out of luck.
• A lot of that income is going to be eaten up by business costs:
• A used walk-behind commercial mower is between $600-$2500.  The cheaper end require local pick-up and have an unknown number of clock hours on them which means availability is spotty and the mower might die midseason.  
• Finishing around the home and walkways requires a commercial weed whip for around $150.  
• The mower and weed whip needs to be transported from site to site.  This requires either a pickup truck or a flatbed attached to a pickup truck.   A used light truck with over 100,000 miles on it runs between $7,000-10,000.  
• Both the mower and the truck require gasoline or diesel to run.  Time spent moving the equipment and truck for refueling is wasted so the business would probably benefit from having an in-bed fuel tank in the pickup truck - but small trucks have small beds so the mower might not fit with an extra fuel tank.  
• I feel like having a late teenage boy driving around in a light truck with an in-bed fuel tank and a heavy commercial mower is a disaster waiting to happen.  I'm thinking this will lead to a higher automotive insurance rate - but I could be wrong on that one.
• I hope Nathan, Christopher and Mark sprung for business insurance when they were running mowing businesses.  That's around $500 per year.
• Adding it up and assuming a 4-year loan on the truck gives a low-end of $3,000 to a high end of $5,650 not including fuel costs and automotive insurance.    I'm also assuming they have minimal advertising costs.   That means the business needs 4-7 suburban clients or 3-5 rural clients to clear costs..  (Rural clients have larger yards, but the cost of transporting equipment to rural clients becomes expensive quickly.  44 suburban clients might live in a 10 mile radius; 30 rural clients may be a 30 mile radius.)  
• Who is funding this?  Most families - ignoring CP/QF status - don't have $3,000 to drop on a family member's start-up.

This means our hypothetical new small business owner just out of high school needs to find 48 suburban clients or 33 rural clients to met easy-peasy goal set by Steven Maxwell after getting $3,000-$5,650 to cover start-up costs. 

Yeah.  Good luck.  They'll need it.