Advice from this year worth repeating

WASHINGTON — In 2004, my daughter, who was 9 at the time, gave me a Christmas present that I shall treasure for the rest of my life.

Olivia created “Yo Mamma: Sayings from My Momma,” a book of all the things I would repeat to her and her siblings. As you might imagine, most of the sayings were about money.

Here are two of my favorite quotes that made it into the book.

■ “Do you have a job?” (I started saying this as soon as the kids started talking and asking for stuff.)

■ “Do you have money to pay for that?” (A standard question when she tried to put something in the shopping cart.)

I smile every time I pull her book from my bookshelf.

So, with Olivia’s book in mind, I thought I’d rerun a few of my quotes from the past year that resonated with readers.

■ “If debt were a person, I’d slap it.” I said this in a column about good debt versus bad debt. I hate all debt. As I wrote, I know my views are extreme, almost un-American, in a nation that relies so heavily personally and politically on borrowing. But when it comes to money, what you tell yourself matters. When we use positive adjectives to describe debt, we minimize the financial bondage it creates.

■ “Empathy does not equal endorsement.” In April, I recommended for the Color of Money Book Club an essay by novelist and former Washington Post book critic William McPherson. McPherson died this past spring, and I thought the essay “Falling” (You can read it at http://bit.ly/Falling_essay) was a powerful look at how this once-privileged person ended up poor because of a series of bad decisions.

Many people feel that there shouldn’t be a government safety net for the irresponsible. They want to help only the poor they deem worthy of assistance. But that’s a dangerous means test. It leaves no room for people to make mistakes. And we are all fallible. Advocating for government-supported antipoverty programs doesn’t mean you absolve people of personal responsibility.

What do we as a society owe the poor? We owe them empathy. We owe them a safety net that gives them a chance to get back on their feet — and maybe even survive.

■ “When it comes to helping your young adult to successfully launch — and stay in flight — there’s no place like home.” A lot of young adults are moving back in with their parents, often because they are saddled with student loans.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I encourage young adults who have burdensome debt to move home if they can. Instead of paying rent, they can attack the debt.

You might think that living at home is a failure to launch, or that it delays the all-important lesson of learning to be independent. But we should remove the stigma of young adults returning home as a financial embarrassment.