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How summer camp became an American obsession
How summer camp became an American obsession

Vox

time24-06-2025

  • General
  • Vox

How summer camp became an American obsession

is the host of Explain It to Me, your hotline for all your unanswered questions. She joined Vox in 2022 as a senior producer and then as host of The Weeds, Vox's policy podcast. 'It has never been the case that the majority of American children went to summer camps,' says Leslie Paris, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and author of the book Children's Nature: The Rise of the American Summer Camp. 'The first camps were founded by urban middle-class men,' she told Vox. 'They were concerned about white boys who they saw as not getting enough outdoor adventure and the kind of manly experiences they would need to be — in the minds of these adults — the nation's leaders for the next generation. They were worried about the effects of urbanization, and they were nostalgic for an earlier day when more boys had grown up in rural places.' How did camp begin to be available for more kids? And if so few people actually attend, then why does summer camp have such lasting cultural influence? Those are just a few of the questions we posed to Paris on the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox's weekly call-in podcast. Below is an excerpt of the conversation with Paris, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to Explain It to Me on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you'd like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@ or call 1-800-618-8545. How did camp expand beyond the audience it was originally created for? The YMCA movement became involved, and by the turn of the century the movement started really ramping up. Not only because more YMCA camps were founded, but because different organizations got involved and more groups of American adults thought this camp idea would be great. By the turn of the century, you've got small numbers of women leading groups of girls out into the wilderness. Many of the women who started camps were college-educated and saw leading girls and giving them adventures as a kind of passion. Then there were urban organizations that began to say, 'This would be great for impoverished working-class kids who never get out of the city at all,' and began sending groups of kids out into the country, often for shorter stays than at private camps. In the early 20th century, you've got a bunch of new movements: the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the Campfire Girls. And then there are different ethnic and religious groups: Jewish Americans, Catholic Americans, who think, Let's start camps for our own kids, and they do that as well. By the early 20th century there's a bevy of different kinds of camps organized for a wider variety of kids to give them an experience of the outdoors. You write in your book that 'this triple nostalgia — for the American past, for camp community, and for individual childhood experience — is critical to understanding why camps have figured so influentially in American culture and in former campers' lives.' I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit more. One of the things I talk about in my book is that camps were a place where children learned nostalgia, that camps taught them a version of the American past. I think many of us are familiar with a use of Indigenous cultural practices that was often quite superficial, but that was meant to introduce non-Indigenous children to one aspect of the American past. Camps were often a place where children were exposed to ideas about what the American past had been, and then as more generations of children attended camps, they themselves brought those kinds of nostalgic memories with them, throughout their lives. When they had a chance, many of those former children sent their own kids to camp. So this became a kind of a nostalgic cultural practice that for many adults reminded them of the first time that they had an adventure away from their parents, away from their families. It's so interesting you talk about Indigenous culture and how that's been used at camp. It makes me think of that scene in [Addams Family Values] where Wednesday's at camp. Why does camp feature so prominently in pop culture if so few of us went? You could ask, Why are so many children's novels premised around an orphan? I think the fact that the kid is an orphan in these novels allows them to go off and have adventures and do things that many kids raised in families would not necessarily be at liberty to do. And I think camps have often represented that space, a space that's at least ostensibly protected, where kids have more free play and can have exciting adventures and develop peer relationships that are outside of the norm. And that piece lends itself really well to popular culture. Camp is so specific. How did you choose this as an academic subject? I knew that I wanted to work on American childhood, which was still a pretty small field in the 1990s, when I started this project. There wasn't a major scholarly book about the history of summer camps at the time and it seemed like a wonderful way to write about something that would be fun to work on. One of the things that I look at in my book is how camps illuminate the ways in which childhood was being transformed in the late 19th and early 20th century. That's so interesting. I imagine that changes at summer camp also reflect changes in American childhood overall. I'd love to hear in broad strokes about some of those changes. How have we seen camp and therefore childhood change over time? One of the main changes that I look at is the rise of the idea of protected childhood. That childhood should be a time apart and children should be protected from the adult world. The late 19th, early 20th century is the same time when you see laws restricting children's labor. There's an emphasis on child protection that's emerging during this period, and camps are one of the early sites of this new idea that children are deserving of spaces apart, time apart, and also that they're deserving of vacations. Although many of the elite kids who attended more expensive private camps were certainly going to have vacations whether or not they went to summer camp, some of the working-class kids at the turn of the 20th century who attended summer camps had never been on a vacation outside of the city. Summer camp has become this huge business these days in the United States, $3.5 billion annually. How did that happen? The camp industry has had to be nimble and change over time, especially since the 1970s, which was a time when many camps struggled and a number failed. The camping industry underwent some structural changes. One of these was the rise of specialty camps: Basketball camp, computer camp, gymnastics camp, dance camp, theater camp — camps that were focused on a really specific interest emerged in the late 20th century. Another issue was that many families who could afford private camps were starting to juggle more different opportunities. The cost of travel by plane was going down, so more families were thinking, Maybe at some point this summer we'd like to take the kids on a trip. There was also a rise in [divorce] and families had to negotiate custody. So even camps that used to have a nine-week schedule increasingly considered moving to a two-session schedule. Modern summer camps have retained many of the same elements as some of the earliest camps, but they've also adjusted to the increasing complexity of some of their clients' lives, and in that way the camp industry has continued to be able to thrive.

Can pop music actually predict a recession?
Can pop music actually predict a recession?

Vox

time11-06-2025

  • Business
  • Vox

Can pop music actually predict a recession?

is the host of Explain It to Me, your hotline for all your unanswered questions. She joined Vox in 2022 as a senior producer and then as host of The Weeds, Vox's policy podcast. But how do we really know if there's an impending economic contraction? 'There's a super wide variety of what qualifies as a so-called 'recession indicator' on the internet,' Wall Street Journal markets reporter Hannah Erin Lang told me in the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Vox's weekly call-in podcast. 'Economists and investors are often looking at these offbeat sources of data or offbeat trends. Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan famously looked at sales of men's underwear with the idea being that if you have to cut back, this might be a place where nobody else is going to know but yourself.' There's another alleged recession indicator taking the internet by storm: music. People are now referring to the late-aughts and early 2010s dance hits as 'recession pop.' But is there any credence to this supposed harbinger of economic downturn? That's the question posed to Switched on Pop cohost Charlie Harding on this week's episode of Explain It to Me. Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you'd like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@ or call 1-800-618-8545. Does music change with the economic outlook? We're all looking for a crystal ball, and music feels like it's got to be it because that's where we go to get into our feelings. So are our playlists indicating larger economic trends? I don't think so. That's interesting because lately there's been all this talk of recession pop. What is recession pop referring to? Recession pop is a made-up, after-the-fact genre, referring to upbeat, bubblegum pop music from the time of the Great Recession. We're talking about Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, Kesha. I think that Katy Perry's whole oeuvre represents that era better than any other. We're talking about songs like 'Teenage Dream,' a song which has this ongoing chord progression that never resolves, that makes you have the feeling of the teenage life that will just never end, you're never going to grow up, and it has this wonderful nostalgic quality to it. Or 'Last Friday Night': the party that is the rager that you're gonna go all-out in. Those songs had a light, effervescent, post-disco, very poppy programmed music kind of vibe. I want to go back in time to the time of bolero jackets and statement belts... You do? Well, okay, not literally. But we're going to go on this journey. What was the sound of that time? It has to sound a little over-polished, really well-made, programmed music. Meaning drum machines, synthesizers, guitars in the line of like Nile Rodgers from Chic — but not nearly as well done — sort of funk-style, disco-style guitars. You might have some really cheesy programmed strings in the background. Then the lyrics have to be either 'Party, party all night forever!' or larger platitudes about being a girlboss. What else was going on in music during that time? Other than these fun, poppy, 'we're going to party all night long' songs. Music had been going through a recession for half a decade at that point. Ever since the turn of the millennium and Napster, the illegal downloading market basically had eviscerated the music industry. It saw its revenues cut in half. Business was in freefall, to the degree that they thought that their future was in downloadable ringtones. Indie music was really big as the mainstream labels were struggling to figure out how to make sales. Hip-hop was going through a bling and party era. There was a lot of upbeat music during these uncertain times, that's certainly true, [but] I think it's important to note as well that during the Great Recession there was plenty of music which didn't reflect an upbeat attitude. One of the biggest songs of 2007 was 'What Goes Around Comes Around' by Justin Timberlake. [There's also] 'Umbrella' by Rihanna. I don't think of those as upbeat, happy songs. If you have to protect yourself from the rain under an umbrella, this is more acknowledging our deep upset at the national condition. I think that even in the recession pop era, there's music of all kinds: upbeat, downbeat, sad, happy. And so I actually think that the genre is a very slippery one that represents a lot of different kinds of music. Are we hearing that sound pop up now? Some people have said that Chappell Roan and Charli XCX are digging into the recession era in their new music. I'm a little more skeptical. If recession pop were doing really well right now, Katy Perry's 'Woman's World' would have been a huge hit, and it has been a real stinker for her. Why are we talking about recession pop right now? Everyone's looking for vibes of what's going on in the larger economy, but I think more largely, millennials are aging out of being cool. Oh, no. You stop listening to new music usually between 25 and 30 years old. And then when you get into a position of power where you become a curator of culture, now it's your time to assert: The thing that was good when I was young is still good. So this could be less about the economy and more about like those of us born in the '80s and early '90s kind of having a midlife crisis. Absolutely, I think there was a huge cultural midlife crisis and a claiming of power. I've seen tons of bars and clubs during these recession pop dance parties and I'm hearing like all these samples in music from current artists from that era. How do you explain all this? Recession pop is very much a real thing and it's completely made-up. There was no such thing as recession pop during the recession. It's a term that was made up only very recently.

Why is Gen Z getting more religious? We asked them.
Why is Gen Z getting more religious? We asked them.

Vox

time10-06-2025

  • General
  • Vox

Why is Gen Z getting more religious? We asked them.

is the host of Explain It to Me, your hotline for all your unanswered questions. She joined Vox in 2022 as a senior producer and then as host of The Weeds, Vox's policy podcast. A parishioner prays during a visit to the Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago on May 8, 2025, after learning that Pope Leo XIV, who was born in Chicago, had been named as first American leader of the Catholic Church.A couple weeks ago, I did something I try to do at least once a month: I went to the church I'm a member of in person instead of online. Growing up, church was a regular part of my life, and not just on Sundays. My father is a pastor, so it was common to spend a weekday evening doing my homework in my dad's office, music from choir rehearsal pouring in as I finished whatever worksheet was due the next day. It's an institution that shaped me: It's where I made a lot of friends, it gave me my first taste of public speaking, and since pastors in my denomination are moved from church to church, it also determined what city I lived in and where I went to school. When I was a kid, attendance was obviously less in my control. If I didn't go to church on Sunday, that meant no hanging with friends the following week. 'If you can't make time for the Lord, how can you make time for something else?' was my mother's refrain. The choice is mine now. I enjoy hearing the songs that were the soundtrack for so much of my childhood. I like saying hello to the people I see week after week. I like the Black liberation theology interpretation of the Bible that I hear every Sunday. And my experience, it turns out, is not unique. As we discussed in the most recent episode of Explain It to Me, Vox's call-in podcast, Gen Z has been finding religion these last few years. It's a phenomenon that reverses some recent trends — and one for which experts are trying to find an explanation. The changing face of religion in America It's a development that Ryan Burge has been keeping his eye on. He was a Baptist pastor for 20 years, and now he's an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. Burge stepped away from ministry because the attendance in his church was declining: Members were aging, and there weren't a lot of young people to keep it alive. 'It's almost like every year, you expect [the share of Christians in the country] to be one point lower than the prior year, or two points lower than the prior year,' Burge told me. 'Every generation is less Christian than the prior generation, going all the way back to the early 1900s. And what's fascinating is that the drop is very consistent.' According to Burge, Catholicism is seeing a huge rise in young men. Now, though, Burge says that not only is that decline tapering off, but 'on some metrics, this data says that young people are actually more likely to be weekly religious attenders than millennials are. This is huge — we've never seen that before. We always assumed religion's going to continue to decline, and it doesn't look like that decline is continuing.' When we asked Explain It to Me listeners about their own experiences with spirituality, we got a wide array of responses. 'I did not grow up going to church. My family never went to church when I was younger, but I always had questions and felt like something bigger was out there,' one listener told us. 'So as soon as I could drive myself, I went to church and started looking for those answers.' Another — a self-described 'cradle Catholic' who has made her way back to religion — called in to say that, 'I understand why a lot of young people are actually going back to religion. It's because there's no other place to turn to in order to see what's wrong with life.' Why is religion making a comeback? So what's behind this uptick? The hypotheses are legion. 'To be a young person is to rebel against your parents,' Burge says. 'In my generation it was like, 'Oh, I grew up very hardcore Catholic or evangelical and so I became an atheist.' That was the most rebellious thing you can do. But imagine if you are a second-generation atheist or third-generation atheist. You know what the most rebellious thing you can do? It's to be Orthodox Christian or be Catholic.' Gender could also be at play. Through the years, more women have been regular church attendees than men, but we're not seeing that with Gen Z. According to Burge, Catholicism is seeing a huge rise in young men. 'I wonder if politics might be driving this religious divide among young people. Women had Time's Up and Me Too. … I think a lot of men feel like they're being overlooked. And if you go to a Catholic church, it's one of the few places in society where men have a privileged position in that hierarchy.' That's a sentiment that was echoed recently during a young adult group at St. Dominic's Catholic Church in San Francisco. In the group, men outnumber women. Father Patrick Verney, who runs the group, acknowledges the shift. 'This is very different from how it's always been in the past. In the past it's always been more women than men,' he said. 'This particular trend that you're talking about is unique in the history of humanity in a certain respect, certainly in the history of Christianity.'

You've found a lost relative. Now what?
You've found a lost relative. Now what?

Vox

time12-05-2025

  • General
  • Vox

You've found a lost relative. Now what?

is the host of Explain It to Me, your hotline for all your unanswered questions. She joined Vox in 2022 as a senior producer and then as host of The Weeds, Vox's policy podcast. Every week on Explain It to Me, Vox's call-in podcast, we answer the questions that matter to you most. When we got a question from a listener named Hannah, it piqued our interest. She wanted to know: How do you find a long-lost relative? 'I was raised by my mom,' she says. 'I knew my dad was out there somewhere, but I never really gave too much thought about it because I did have a pretty full life.' By the time we spoke with her, she had found her father online and reached out to him. But it raised an entirely new set of questions. 'I never gave much thought to, 'Okay, so now what?'' Journalist Libby Copeland has spent a lot of time thinking about those next steps. She's the author of The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are, a book that looks at the ways at-home DNA testing has shaped families. 'This whole question around the distinction between biological and non-biological family and roots and identity, it's everything to me,' Copeland told Vox. 'I think it's so intrinsically connected to existential questions around who we are and how we get to decide what to be.' Explain It to Me The Explain It to Me newsletter answers an interesting question from an audience member in a digestible explainer from one of our journalists. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. On this week's episode, we discuss with Copeland how to find family, the way at-home DNA tests have changed things, and what to do if you come across an unexpected relative. Below is an excerpt of the conversation with Copeland, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to Explain It to Me on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you'd like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@ or call 1-800-618-8545. Has this reporting changed the way you think about family? Definitely. I grew up in my biological family, so I'm not someone who was donor-conceived or adopted. But spending so much time talking to people who don't have a genetic connection to the families that they were raised in, it's really interesting to hear just how much pull that genetic family has over you. In my family, we were able to connect with ancestors in Sweden, and then we traveled there and we're able to connect with a second cousin of my dad going back a hundred-and-something years from when our relative had emigrated. That made the world seem so much smaller and so much more intimate. It made history feel present to me. It made me feel like the past wasn't over. If someone's taken one of these at-home DNA tests and they realize they have a family member, how should they go about trying to connect with them? It very much matters who it is and how much knowledge you have going into it. It's often easy to start with the person you're finding [through the test] just because they're the immediate connection. But if you're finding a half-sibling and you know that's because you share a father in common, a lot of [experts] will recommend that you start with the father first. 'The danger of the promise of DNA testing when it's used like this can be that we interpret it in a simplistic way.' Very often, there's a secret at the heart of your own origin story if you're one of these folks who's gone to DNA testing either looking for family or making a discovery. People are advised to start with the person at the center of it because they often want to have agency over their own narrative, and connecting with that person first allows the best possible chance of them then introducing you to other people. What's the proper way to go about this? Do you show up on their doorstep? DM them on Instagram? Write a letter? When I was writing The Lost Family, I talked to people who did show up on someone's doorstep or make a phone call and it can be quite challenging and disruptive. You want to do it on terms that allow the other person as much control as possible, because in this situation, very often, there's a disconnect of knowledge. For instance, the seeker knows they exist, but their genetic father may not know. Very often, the best possible way is to write a letter. The tone of that letter is something that you want to think really carefully about, because there's different ways you could go. You're not necessarily trying to make a really intimate connection right away, but you could share a little about yourself, share a little bit about what you're looking for. You could start small and build a relationship from there. Let's say you're in a situation where you find out who your parent is, but you know, it's hard to find them. You can't find a number, they're not on Facebook, but their kids are. Should you contact them? Like what do you do in that situation? You might say something like, 'Hey, I see we're genetically related based on our DNA test. I'd love to connect and learn a little more about how we're related. Are you interested?' There's also this question of, 'How do I ask my dad, 'Why didn't you ever come see me?'' without coming off too intense? This is the mystery of a lifetime. People talk around that question for decades without ever fully asking it. I interviewed a woman who wasn't told she was adopted. She didn't find out until she'd had some life-altering surgery that it turned out she might not have needed if she'd known her full medical history. When she finally did find out the identity of her biological father, she reached out to him in a number of ways. He was not terribly responsive, and then she finally called and got him on the phone, and he was so dismissive. He could not at all give her what she wanted. He would not even confirm that he knew for sure that she was his daughter or that he'd even dated her mother. She cried a lot when we spoke, and it was because she had these questions that could not be answered. Her biological mother had passed away a few months before she discovered her identity. And the real question she wanted to ask her biological mom was, 'Did you ever look for me? Did you ever think about me?' And in the absence of being able to ask her, the daughters of her mother did not want to believe that she existed. They didn't want to believe that her mother had placed a child for adoption. In a perfect world, you would form a relationship and get to know them, right? But it very much matters what the secret is at the heart of your own identity story. Because the nature of that can alter people's willingness to embrace that you exist. There's the question of what you do with that. I also think there's the question of what people are looking for when they're looking to connect with new family. Are you trying to figure out where you got your eyes? Where you got your personality? All of it, right? I want to see someone else whose face looks like mine. I want to see someone else whose eyes look like mine. I want to have the experience of looking and seeing myself, the way I see myself in a mirror, in somebody else. If you're adopted, you may never have had that experience. It's profound. I interviewed a man who had been a donor in the 1970s. And he had, the last time I spoke with him, 21 children through donor conception, and then he had two biological children that he'd had with his wife. They talked, and some of them are quite close to him. Some of them do have Thanksgiving dinner with him. And they talked about how they would get together and go to a bar, and they would just be completely struck by their mannerisms or their mutual love of music. It blew them away. And they were like, 'Okay, yes, DNA is not destiny, but man, is there something to be said for the power of genetics.' How much we should make of the similarities we see in family when it comes to personality traits? Do genetics really tell us who we are and who we're going to be in this way? The danger of the promise of DNA testing when it's used like this can be that we interpret it in a simplistic way: 'The blueprint for my future means I'm inevitably destined to be XYZ.' And that's not true. I have seen cases where people were so eager to find family that they read into things and found patterns that weren't there based on their assumption of genetic identity. In all of this talk of found family, we haven't really talked about managing the existing family you have. How do people juggle that desire to find out about new family members without unintentionally hurting or alienating the people who have been there for them all along? I talked to a lot of people who were seekers, and some managed to do this really well. It's incredibly reductive to think about this as a nature versus nurture thing — you can have room in your heart for both. You can have your dad who tucked you in at night; he fathered you and he still fathers you. There's another man out there, though. And to him, you owe half your genetic data. He's your biological father and we don't have the language for that.

How to talk to your boomer parents about retirement
How to talk to your boomer parents about retirement

Vox

time28-04-2025

  • Business
  • Vox

How to talk to your boomer parents about retirement

is the host of Explain It to Me, your hotline for all your unanswered questions. She joined Vox in 2022 as a senior producer and then as host of The Weeds, Vox's policy podcast. Money is always stressful, but between on-again, off-again, on-again tariffs, inflation, and a general sense of uncertainty, all things finance have been especially anxiety-inducing lately. Much of the advice given is geared toward people who have time to make up losses in the stock market. But what if you're retired or close to retirement age? That's the matter at hand on this week's episode of Explain It to Me, Vox's call-in podcast where we answer the questions that matter to you most. Washington Post personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary knows that worry firsthand. She's on the edge baby boomer and Gen X and is looking ahead to when she's no longer working. 'Like many people, I'm stressed to the max,' she says. 'So I am punching a lot of pillows and crying and screaming and doing a little cussing, but trying to not let the fear dictate moves. And that's the key.' Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day, compiled by news editor Sean Collins. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. What other advice does she have for people looking to retire soon? And how should those of us who have more time talk with our older loved ones about their retirement plans? Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. If you'd like to submit a question, send an email to askvox@ or call 1-800-618-8545. What should people who are approaching retirement age be doing right now in this economic moment? You want to do a retirement budget. Figure out what it would take if you retired to live in retirement. And if you have a shortfall, then there are some things that you need to do. Try to boost your savings. Try to look at your housing situation. Can I cut housing? Can I have a roommate? Do I need to move someplace that is more affordable? So you have to do some forward thinking before you retire to make sure that your finances are as secure as possible. Related The best financial advice right now is the most counterintuitive I have to admit something: I was particularly interested in this episode because my parents are boomers. What advice do you have for listeners that are like me? It's understandable that you're concerned about your parents because if they're not prepared, then that burden may fall on you. I say burden, not in a sense of you don't want to do it, but certainly when you are in your 30s, 40s, and early 50s, you're trying to get ready for your own retirement. But I think this is a good opportunity to have open conversations. This is a window to say, 'Hey, How are you positioned? Are you worried? Is there anything I should be concerned about? Is there something I can do differently to help you?' And maybe that'll open up a conversation where they say, 'No, we're fine. We're really worried, but we got things in control. Here's what's happening.' It's a very difficult conversation to have, especially if you've grown up in a household where money wasn't talked about a lot. For a younger adult to try to come to their parents and say, 'Hey, you got any money? What's going on?' — that's a hard conversation. But the roles aren't reversed. You are not their parents. You are now an adult friend who happens to be their child. How do you recommend that listeners start that conversation with the retirement-age folks in their lives? Start with yourself and your own feelings. Say, 'I'd love to talk to you about this because I'm a little worried. I'm saving for retirement and this is what's concerning me.' And then you say, 'How about you?' What you don't want to do is say something like, 'Do you have any money? What's going on?' You don't want to come at them in a more adversarial way. You should see each other as companions and accountability partners. What should people prioritize when they look at their finances right now? In this moment, cash is king. If you got a tax refund, I would be saving that. If you were already just getting by — maybe you weren't living paycheck to paycheck but there wasn't much left over — I would be stockpiling cash in a high-yield savings account in case you lose your job, in case the economy really does go into a recession, if it gets worse than it is now. The prudent thing right now is to not get into any kind of debt or use a lot of cash that you might need if you lose your job. If I was a federal employee, a federal contractor, anybody whose income is derived from the federal government in a significant way, I would be canceling vacations. I would not be doing major home improvement projects. I don't want to make people panic — although it's perfectly fine if you're scared because that's just human nature. But I will say the prudent thing right now is to not get into any kind of debt or use a lot of cash that you might need if you lose your job. What are the different ways people can help their parents financially without getting behind on their own goals? Do your own budget, and make sure that you have a cash cushion for yourself. Make sure that you are saving in a way that will hopefully help you have a secure retirement. Get rid of all your debts: If you got credit card debt, student loan, car note — everything except for your mortgage. Then, if all of that is taken care of, if you want to create an account where you put some money in every month to say, 'This is the money that I'm gonna designate to help my parents or maybe another relative.' My husband and I do that. We have a family and friends fund so that if somebody loses their job or has some difficulty, this is where we pull the money to help them out. What advice do you have for people who are at retirement age but haven't been able to save as much? How do they prepare for this moment? The first thing I would say is don't beat yourself up. You are where you are. Accept that, but do something about it. If you are getting close to retirement, then you've got to make some hard decisions. Look at your housing situation. You might have to say, 'You know what? Those young adults that were asking me about my money? Maybe I have to move in with them or they move in with me.' And so you look at the big parts of your budget and how you might change that. Financial advice can admittedly be a little frustrating because we hear the same thing over and over again. 'Sit tight, stay the course, don't make any rash decisions.' What do you say to people who feel antsy right now? Who want a different answer than what they usually hear? Listen, good advice is good advice, no matter what. Good advice is timeless. And people want a microwave answer to a problem that needs to be baked in the oven. You can't microwave your way away from this situation. You just can't. There is no secret recipe or secret anything. We know by history. The market eventually returns historically. Could it change in the future? Sure it can. But we have decades and decades of data that show that when we go into an economic downturn, we come out because it's in everybody's interest to make sure that happens. And so while you may be tired of us saying, 'Hold tight,' you might be tired of us saying, 'Don't make rash decisions,' that is the best advice. We know that when you make decisions in haste, when you make decisions based on your emotions, you make bad decisions.

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