It took me about 34 years to learn that I don’t need to buy a pack of peanut M&M’s just because they are right there next to the check-out line. 34 years to learn to choose not to spend my money on impulse purchases. At least not on impulse purchases of candy. My bookshelf betrays me as a not-yet-recovered impulse book buyer.
If you can choose only one of two things, and you aren’t satisfied after you choose, you learn to choose better. That’s what finally worked for me–my dissatisfaction with how I felt after eating M&M’s taught me something.
If you want to teach your children to make good choices, teach them how to handle limited resources, like their money, well. My parents started me out with an allowance of a few dollars a week, but that was the 1970′s. Decades later, I was still buying M&M’s. Their approach to an allowance didn’t work for me. Here’s what I learned from their mistakes:
1) Give your children their allowance; don’t make them ask you for it.
At ten years old, I had been receiving an allowance for several weeks but hadn’t actually held the first dollar. So, one afternoon at a music store, I asked my father for my allowance. He asked me why I wanted it. Think about that–when was the last time your employer asked you to explain how you were going to spend your paycheck?
2) If your child doesn’t control the money, they might as well not have any.
I didn’t ask my father how he spent his paycheck. I just explained that I wanted to buy an album–Elton John’s Greatest Hits. He said no. Just like that. No reason given–he had cash, he always had cash. We had time for me to shop–my mother was in a shoe store next door for over 45 minutes. The simplest explanation was that he did not want me to buy the album–did he not approve of the music? I learned nothing, except that he still controlled the money even though it was “my” allowance.
3) Preventing mistakes prevents learning from mistakes.
If I had bought that album, I think I would have been disappointed soon after. My best friend already had it. That was the only way I discovered music then–through friends. And I had already heard every song about 25 times.
What I wanted, in retrospect only–I had not yet been cursed with the full extent of my coming self-awareness–was to own the album. To hold it in my hands anytime I wanted. I wanted to meet a need by spending my allowance, a poor use of money at any age. But, had I been allowed to make that mistake, I might have begun to learn to avoid that mistake before I was in my 30′s.
One Response to “How to teach your child to spend money well”
When I was young, there must have been some research out about this. My dad gave me an allowance every week without fail, unconditional of grades, chores, or anything else. When I was in 7th grade, they started factoring my lunch money into my allowance, so if I wanted something expensive it would cost me my own hunger or the annoyance of making a PB&J in the morning.
But I definitely learned a lot about money that way, and I will be using the same techniques with my kids!