A lack of foresight? I saw that coming!

By Ken Oxley on Mar 11, 09 02:12 PM

Ah, the youth of today! They have much in their favour. Time on their side, certainly, but that's a given.

Good looks too - or as good as they're ever likely to be without the intervention of cosmetic surgery.

And, for the most part, they're in rude health; the hallmarks of age - the aches, the pains, the thickening middle, the thining hair, the shortness of breath, the senior moments - they're all lightyears away, so far as to be functionally beyond reach.

But these advantages come with strings . . .

Because one of the many drawbacks of youth is a complete lack of foresight.

Impetuosity doesn't even begin to cover it. Take my 18-year-old son, who last month passed his driving test at the third attempt.

His plan on passing was to save up for a car. No great surprise there. Except that in order to save up, one requires an income.

And in order to have a income, one requires a job. These are fundamentals that those of us not blinded by teenage rashness have no difficulty grasping.

Joe, however, decided to quit his part-time job at a pizza restaurant because he didn't like the manager.

His carefully considered plan was to, ahem, get another job. Not just any job, but one that would also fit in better with his college timetable and pay considerably more money.

When I pointed out that a much better plan would have been to secure the new, improved job before dispensing with the old, rubbish one, he just mumbled something along the lines of having already fixed up an interview elsewhere.

Predictably, he didn't get that job. And so far he's had no joy anywhere else either. For some reason there's not much demand for teenagers with no life experience and a habit of quitting when the going gets tough.

So now he's moping around the house, itching to get behind the wheel of a car but with no means to make even a token contribution to the cost.

And that's something my wife and I are insisting on. Even if we were to add him as an additional driver on one of our policies, it is going to add at least £2,000 to our annual premium.

And to be fair, that's a price tag none of us saw coming!