this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

I've written some other posts on teaching my children the value of money. Find them here: part one , part two, part three

Bug turned four on Tuesday and in the mail he received a card with four crisp dollar bills from grandma. Excited doesn't even come close to describing him after he opened that card. And I was excited too since this would be his first time with money of his very own to spend. I had to run a few errands today, so I told him he could bring his money along to see if there was anything he wanted to buy. Let me tell you that I created a monster - he became very obsessed with how much everything cost, even after he had spent his four dollars.

It was very hard for me to allow him to buy what he wanted to buy. He first picked up a bucket of sidewalk chalk - perfect! But he also wanted things that I could foresee ending up in the trash in the near future. I needed to constantly remind myself that, although I should offer advice and guidance, the choice really was his and should be his. He needs to learn that sometimes you spend your money on things you later wished you hadn't.

I found it helpful to ask him what he would do with his chosen item. Sometimes he said he didn't know and he'd put it down and look for something else. I think he really just liked the fact that he could choose what to buy, buying something he wanted wasn't nearly as important as just buying something. That's not really good, but I guess it's to be expected since this is a new thing for him.

Mostly, I realized that he needs some more work with his math skills before he can really effectively learn how to manage his money. Telling him that something costs $2 doesn't mean a whole lot to him since he doesn't yet know that that is less than what he has, so he could buy something that costs $2. Likewise, the concept that he could buy one larger thing (and use all his money) or several smaller things didn't seem to make sense to him.

photo by theritters via flickr