Daily Excerpt: Clean Your Plate! (Liz Bayardelle) - Chapter 1: Do you need any money?
Excerpt from Clean Your Plate! (Bayardelle) -
Chapter 1
Do You Need Any Money?
The trope of Mom or Dad being a child’s ATM has gotten so common it’s not even a funny Internet meme anymore. (And if you’re at all familiar with the Internet, that’s really saying something.) Every parent knows that it’s probably bad just to hand their kid money whenever they want something, but that doesn’t mean we’re actually good at resisting the urge to do just that when the situation arises.
Why We Say It
If it helps assuage your parental guilt at all, this isn’t a bad impulse to have. You’ve spent the entirety of your child’s life trying to provide for all their needs, even trying to anticipate your child’s needs before they even occur so your little kidlet doesn’t have to want for anything. Do any of you moms out there have a purse whose sheer heft equals your body weight due to the abundance of granola bars, spare socks, and just in case toys?3 It’s because you want to make sure your kid has everything they need at all times. While this impulse can make you a fantastic parent, it’s also the thing that, when applied to the financial realm, is going to turn your kid into a spoiled little freeloader.
Research Says (What They Hear)
I’m not going to tell parents never to give their kids money because not only would that be incredibly unrealistic it would also be entirely hypocritical. However, I do want to convey that the way you handle the issue of money with your kids can have a serious, measurable, and long-term effect on how they handle, think about, and relate to money for the rest of their lives.
My kiddo thinks we acquire things by magic. The first thing I want to stress here is that whatever financial system you choose to adopt with your kids, it should be geared toward preparing them for adulthood. When they turn 18 (or 21, or 35, or whatever age at which you choose to release them into the wild), they will enter the “real world” armed only with the knowledge you gave them and the habits you repeatedly drilled into their heads. If you give them money with no strings attached any time they want anything, there’s a solid chance that they’ll enter the adult world expecting roughly the same treatment. Unfortunately, this usually means that their outstretched palm will somehow eventually end up pointing back in your direction as there aren’t very many employers willing to dole out high salaries for no work.
What To Say Instead
So, keeping in mind this horror story of your future 45-year-olds still looking to you when they want to buy a car, let’s delve into why kids need money, the different ways you can give it to them, and what message each of these different methods is going to send to their developing ideas of how the world works.
Why Kids Do Actually Need Spending Money
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably wondered why exactly kids need money when we’re the ones who buy their clothes, food, rent, toys, and basically everything else. The short answer is that they really don’t need money right now, but they desperately need a safe environment for practicing their financial skills so they don’t end up in the poor house later. Childhood is the time when you introduce your kid to important financial concepts that they’ll need later in life. This list includes (but is definitely not limited to) things like:
• how to budget their expenses (or their wants) against a regularly occurring, fixed amount (i.e. a salary or allowance);
• how to save money over time for a desired purchase that is larger than the amount of money you currently have;
• how to find ways to earn extra money when you have higher expenses than usual;
• the fact that you don’t need to spend all of your money the second you earn it; and/or
• how to give a portion of your money to charity
As you can see, this is a pretty important list of skills for your kiddo to learn. That’s why it’s important that they practice their financial skills with money and expenses that don’t really matter while they still have you as a safety net. If they’re 12 and accidentally blow their entire savings on Legos so they don’t have enough money to go to the movies with their friends, they will feel temporary discomfort, but it won’t be the end of the world. If they don’t learn how to budget, save, and spend wisely, they could be 30 and blow all their money on a big-screen television so they don’t have enough money to pay rent. You want them to make their mistakes (and learn from them) when the stakes are small and they have you as a backup so that they don’t make them later when the stakes are higher. So, while you do pay for rent, food, clothes, school, and basically everything else that matters, it’s still important for your kids to have a way of earning, saving, and spending their own money because it gives them a nice, low-pressure laboratory to simulate what it’ll be like in the big scary world.
For more posts about Liz and her books, click HERE.
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