Is it important to save money for retirement or your children?
ANSWER:
It's permissible to do, however! To save for your children, it depends. If you save without sacrificing the purpose of your life, that's alright; but people who give away the time that they should devote for their own betterment, they give that to their children, then it's a hundred percent waste. Because your child, when he comes into the world, he brings along an allowance that he takes with him from heaven, everybody is born with an allowance. My parents didn't set me up in business, didn't leave me any money: Baruch Hashem I never had to borrow any money all my life.
If you won't save up for your children, you'll take off your evenings to study Torah, you'll do tzedoka, you'll give money to charity; don't try to leave wealth for your children. Of course, if you want to leave them Torah wealth and it costs money to send them to Yeshivas, it costs money to keep even your married children in Kollel, that's yours! Whatever you do for them is for you, that's an investment on your own. But even that, suppose you're capable of sitting in the Kollel but your son would like you to keep on slaving to keep him in the Kollel? So you tell him, if you wish you can do it for me, I'll let you slave and support me in the Kollel.
Why not? A father has the right to be in the Kollel, sometimes the father has a better head than the son has. The Gemara says, hu lilmod ubno lilmod hu kodem, it's a question who should learn he or his son, he's first. So you don't give away your soul for your children. But – if you can do it without any big sacrifices of your time, to leave a little bit for them, nothing wrong.
Good Shabbos To All
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures.
To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
Important Numbers
