Sasha and Malia may be living the lifestyle of the rich and famous, but President Obama says his daughters know what it’s like to be poor.
In a recent interview for the Amazon Kindle store, the Commander-in-Chief said family helps keep his children grounded.
“We are constantly reminding Malia and Sasha of the slightly unreal environment that they’re in, and that that’s not the norm and they shouldn’t expect to be the norm,” he said. “One of the advantages we have is that we still have family members who are not only middle class, but we’ve got some family members who are poor. Malia and Sasha have cousins who know what it’s like to struggle and know what it’s like to have to scrape by. They know that those kids are just as worthy as they are, they just haven’t had as much luck.”
President Obama –who grew up like majority of Americans without a personal movie theatre, chef and White House staff – said his uses his humble beginnings to teach his daughters a realistic sense of wealth.
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“If you look back on your childhood, or if I talk to my friends, all of us have that same impression when we go back home and we realize that the place where we were living was pretty small,” he explained. “These days people would say, ‘How did you live in a place that small?’ Well it didn’t feel that small at the time. It was secure. It was stable.”
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“There was not that window into the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” he added. “Kids weren’t monitoring every day what Kim Kardashian was wearing, or where Kanye West was going on vacation, and thinking that somehow that was the mark of success.”
The President said he aims to teach his kids traditional benchmarks of success, including buying a home, having a career, getting an education and saving for retirement.
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