Some of us turned our heads to the side when it was reported that the rapper and businessman Diddy gave his son Justin a $360,000 Maybach for his 16th birthday. People asked me what I thought about this, since I've written a great deal on how to teach your kids about money, and I used a three letter acronym: TAH -- "Tacky as Hayell."

I respect Diddy and I apologize for having to lean in on him for this one, but as S Tia Brown and I discuss in our latest episode of 'Financial Lovemaking,' you can find ways to show your children love without spoiling them for the rest of the world. By giving his son such an extraordinary gift at such an early age, Diddy may have minimized his son's ability to conceptualize the value of working hard for his success or empathizing with those who are less fortunate. In other words, receiving such overdoses of dopamine at the age of 16 is a surefire recipe for depression later in life.


Okay, I'll stop with the dopamine talk. My point is that life is about learning, growing and experiencing. Diddy became the man he is today because he had to hustle, struggle, fight and survive. He lived through the East Coast-West Coast battles of the 1990s and the challenges of earning respect in the highly competitive music industry. By putting your son on the mountain top before he has ever learned to climb, you are only giving him the ability to fall to the ground.


I remember going to college and calling my mother to ask her for $20 so I could buy food. She told me that she wasn't going to send me anything, and encouraged me to go out and get a job. Being hungry (both physically and metaphorically) not only led me to go out and get a job, but it also inspired me to work hard for everything I received. My struggle was never easy and there were a lot of tough days, but I wouldn't change a thing. Had my mother given me that $20 at the age of 18, I never would have busted my butt to learn how to work hard and find creative ways to get ahead in this world. What's most important was that when I was finally successful, I knew that I'd earned it.

So, I admit that I'm in the Warren Buffett school of child-rearing. Warren Buffett is worth about $37 billion, which is roughly 100 times more than Diddy. In fact, Diddy could earn a million dollars a day for the next 100 years and still not have as much money as Buffett. To make the wealth disparity even more clear, Warren Buffett earns Diddy's entire net worth every two months in interest alone. So, if anyone has an excuse to spoil their children with $360,000 cars, it would be Buffett.

But Buffett isn't like Diddy. The billionaire gives his children a comfortable living and plenty of opportunities to allow them to make their own way. He then opens the door for them to learn and grow without spoiling them. They know they are Warren Buffett's children, but they also know that they are not any better than anyone else. In fact, to compare and contrast value systems, Diddy gave $10,000 to the Yele Haiti foundation, while giving his son a $360,000 car. Buffett gave a small cut of his fortune to his children while giving the bulk of his wealth ($31 billion) to charity. Perhaps Diddy can learn a few things from Buffett about what it really means to be wealthy. I truly wish he'd given that $360,000 to Haiti -- his son would have been fine with the $10,000.




Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and the author of the new book 'Black American Money.' To have Dr. Boyce's commentary delivered to your e-mail, please click here.