A quote
from the legendary "The Forward", "the voice of the Jewish immigrant", New York, which is now a family of newspapers in English, Russian and Yiddish.
I quote from the online version at page
http://www.forward.com/issues/2004/04.01.23/askwendy.html,
namely from that marvellous column of advice "Ask Wendy" (not our Wendy McElroy, mind you, but Wendy Belzberg):
My entire family is going away together on vacation. My father has offered either to buy my airplane ticket or to give me the cash equivalent. It's about $6,000, which is a significant amount of money to me. Is it rude to take the cash?
— Flights of fancy
No ruder than it is for your father to offer it. Your father's terms make it more appealing not to join the family vacation, which makes me wonder about the nature of your relationship. Is he secretly hoping that you will take the cash instead? This is not the equivalent of saying to a bride that she can have a wedding or a $100,000 check. If you don't care about missing the family reunion, the right thing to do is to politely decline both offers. But since that wasn't your question, my advice is this: Don't sell yourself short. Are you worth only $6,000, or do you think you could get your father to pay you more not to attend? Think about it before you accept his offer. If family vacations are a regular occurrence, you soon may have a profitable business.
Write to "Ask Wendy" at 954 Lexington Avenue #189, New York, N.Y. 10021 or at wendy@forward.com.
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