孩子開銷大怎麼辦?

At 10, Grace Morgan is a young fashionista and takes pains to dress in the latest styles. But her mom, Amy, works part-time and her husband was recently laid off, leaving little room in the family budget for designer-brand clothes.

10歲的格雷斯•摩根(Grace Morgan)是一位年少的時尚追隨者，極力追趕最新的服飾風尚。但她媽媽艾米(Amy)卻找不到全職工作，她爸爸不久前還被解僱了，她家因此基本負擔不起供格雷斯購買設計師品牌服裝的開銷。

So Grace didn't ask her mom to open her wallet this fall to buy clothes. Instead, she sold a stack of her own old jeans and shirts at a rummage sale and paired the proceeds with discount coupons to get the stylish jeggings and tops she wanted for school, says her mother, of Lake in the Hills, Ill. Grace is learning 'we have to make choices with our money,' she says.

Clayton Hauck for The Wall Street Journal格雷斯只能選擇相對便宜的服裝。因此，格雷斯今年秋季沒有要媽媽掏錢給她買衣服。她母親艾米說，格雷斯轉而選擇在一次清倉拍賣會上出售了一批自己穿過的舊牛仔褲和襯衫，用出售所得再加上一些購物優惠券購買了她想穿到學校去的時尚的牛仔打底褲和上衣。艾米說，格雷斯正在學會“不得不用自己的錢做選擇”。

The cost of raising kids is continuing to rise. A middle-income family can expect to shell out nearly a quarter of a million dollars, or $222,360, to raise a baby born in 2009 to age 18, according to the Department of Agriculture. That is up about 1.4% from 2007, before the recession began -- and it doesn't include college costs.
養育孩子的成本在繼續增長。據美國農業部(Department of Agriculture)說，一箇中等收入家庭要把一名2009年出生的孩子養到18歲，需要支出222,360美元。這較本次經濟衰退開始前的2007年增加了1.4%，而且這其中還未包括上大學的費用。

Now, amid tight household budgets and a growing belief that today's youth will face a lasting drop in their standard of living, many parents are working to reshape children's expectations.

現在，鑑於美國人都在紛紛緊縮家庭預算，以及人們越來越相信當今的年青人將面臨生活水平持久性下降的局面，許多父母正在着手重塑孩子的預期。

Ms. Morgan is teaching Grace and her brother Noah, 13, to resist consumer pressures. 'We very openly heckle' such shows as 'My Super Sweet 16' on MTV, ridiculing such excesses as when a teen receives a Mercedes or opulent vacations, she says. Both children have learned to enjoy inexpensive family camping vacations, and they sell items on eBay to raise cash for purchases. 'The joke around our house is, if it's not nailed down, they will sell it,' Ms. Morgan says.
艾米正在教格雷斯和她13歲的哥哥諾亞(Noah)抵禦消費壓力。艾米說，我們非常公開地質疑MTV上諸如《我的16歲花季》(My Super Sweet 16' on MTV)等節目，當節目中出現一名十幾歲孩子得到一輛奔馳汽車或外出豪華度假的機會時，我們會奚落這份過分的慷慨；我家的兩個孩子都學會了享受惠而不費的全家外出露營度假，他們會通過在eBay網上出售物品來籌錢買自己想要的東西。艾米說，她們全家津津樂道的玩笑是，如果家裏哪樣東西沒有用釘子固定住，孩子們就可以把它賣掉。

In the past, money talk was taboo in many families, and many parents sheltered children from financial realities. Parents 'want everything to be just great for our families. It's hard sometimes' to set limits, says Gina Maione Earles, chief executive of Mothers & More, a 4,100-member networking group, where teaching kids money skills is a popular topic at meetings.
以往，有關金錢的話題是美國許多家庭的禁忌，許多父母會刻意避免讓孩子面對財務現實。Mothers & More是一個有4,100名會員的社交團體，如何教孩子理財是其聚會上的熱門話題。該機構的首席執行長厄爾斯(Gina Maione Earles)說，父母們希望家裏一切順心如意，有時很難給孩子設置限制。

But fewer families can afford to indulge their kids; 24% of parents made back-to-school shopping budgets with their kids this year, up from 18% in 2006, says a Capital One survey of 500 households.
但有財力放縱自己孩子的家庭正在減少；金融機構Capital One針對500個美國家庭進行的一項調查顯示，今年有24%的父母是與孩子一起編制返校購物預算的，這一比例高於2006年時的18%。