Teaching kids the value of money
Categories: Preschoolers, Money & Work, Fun & Activities, Development, In The News, Gadgets & Tech
Let's say you've been out shopping with your child. Your child has been good. Your child asks for the latest must-have widget on the shelf. The widget is less than twenty dollars. What do you do?
According to J. F. Straw, you should tell the little scamper "No." In an interview with ParentWonder, Straw explains the best way to deal with unplanned purchase requests from a child is to deny them. If negotiations (aka "incessant whining") continues, ask the child's plan to pay for the item. Is the child willing to take a job walking the neighbor's dog or raking leaves? Use the birthday money they had been saving for a new skateboard?
It's easy to cave and give in to reasonable requests of a kid. However, by doing so we rob them of understanding the value of money, the pride in working hard and saving to achieve a financial goal, and the pride of owning something they earned themselves. Placing the financial burden on the child, forces them to assess their level of need and/or desire for the item is common sense advice that would stem the tide of small plastic pieces entering the home.
Instead of just giving them what they want, how about helping them make a piggy bank out of an empty mayonnaise jar to give them a cute and accessible place to store their own hard-earned cash?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
~Monica 9-24-2007 @ 12:47PM
This is one area of parenting I think I'm going to need all the help I can get! I am cursed with a decent income and have lost a lot of my senses when it comes to thinking of money in the right way. It will be hard to not just buy the item but I really like this idea of making a visual and guiding a thought process in your child in order to teach them to value money and how it's earned.
I think another great lesson is the lesson of "do I *need* this?" - how will this item enhance my life and is it really worth purchasing? I wish I had that thought process as a habit growing up.
http://www.raisinglucas.com
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Abel Cheng 9-25-2007 @ 11:53PM
My plan is not to let my kids know how rich I am until the grasp the concept of money pretty well. Otherwise, I add my kids to spoilt brats stats. It's important to teach kids the value of money, budgeting so that they don't end up with mountains of debts.
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Sandyone 9-25-2007 @ 10:27AM
My kids get an allowance. When they want something, I say, "Sure...do you have enough from your allowance?" Suddenly, that latest widget isn't so attractive. Sometimes, it still is and they dig in and buy it themselves. My boys are still stinging from an ant farm they chipped in on together. It was so lame! Stay away from those blue gel ones and pick up an Uncle Milton's green plastic one for $7-10 that you fill with real dirt and sand. You can also connect them to other ones and get a real colony going.
I have a bad habit of saying, "We can't afford that" when I really mean "We choose not to afford that". We've got 5 kids, my husband is a government employee and we are doing great financially. That wouldn't be true if we didn't realize that just because we *can* afford something, it doesn't mean that we *should* afford it. The kids seem to be learning pretty well.
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Tash 9-25-2007 @ 5:16PM
Just a great tool we have purchased to help teach our DD about money - her allowance gets divided into three - spending, saving and charity in her Learning Cents Bank: http://www.learningcents.com/
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