11/06/2008

We Bought You A Piggy Bank For A Reason!


Few things draw snarls, glares or eye-rolls from parents like a child asking them for money. Sometimes rightfully so after witnessing a barrage of, "Can I have a quarter? Can I have a dollar? Can I have this? Can I have that? Mommy, where's your purse?" And on and on and on.

It's a tiring and uncomfortable scene like something out of the Office. My cousins were terrible about this and had a knack for ruining each and every shopping trip when we were kids by badgering my aunt until she would cave - and she would always cave. We've worked hard to avoid this with our kids.

So last week, when getting ready to go with some friends to a musical put on by the local theater group, the Mrs. told our daughter to pick out a purse to take for the money she would need to get in.

So when hearing that she would need to take money, what was her first reaction?

Now remember, she's 5.


Did she run to us, open purse in hand, asking for said money?
No.

Did she run to mommy's purse and start to fish it out herself?
Nope.

Her first reaction was to ask for help with getting her piggy bank down. We gladly informed her that it wouldn't be necessary, and that we would pay for her ticket, she only had to manage to get the money from the house to the theater without losing it.

Now this didn't happen by chance and her attitude towards money is not a passing phase. Over the coming weeks, we'll detail some of the methods we've used to teach our first child about money and plan to use with her sister as well.

We bought her a piggy bank for a reason, and it was not a novelty!

Stay tuned.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, sounds like you have done a truly great job educating your first child about money. It's a shame that so few of our generation was propely taught by either our parents or school about the safe handling of money. Then again, could we have seen that credit would have been so easily used in comparison to our parents?

Anonymous said...

Thanks, 40. We've made a concerted effort with the kids. Leading by example doesn't hurt either. Plenty of work to do though.

The easy availability of credit and debt has been pushed on our society like so many drug dealers taking over a community. Once they got people hooked, it was all over. They've sweetened the deal over time just to keep their regulars coming back. And only now to we see the negative affect this reliance on credit and debt has had on our country. It's sick.

Anonymous said...

She sounds like a cool kid. We don't have kids yet but I'm already planning their financial education, my parents didn't teach me anything about money and I got myself into a ton of debt as a result. I want to do a better job.

RetiredAt47 said...

What a nice story, it made me smile! I'm really impressed with that level of maturity from a 5-year old :-)

Anonymous said...

47 -
She is quite mature. Have to remind her occasionally that she can just be a kid:) Still, we're quite impressed with her as well. Gives us plenty to write about, too.

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