A Milestone That Warms My Frugal Little Heart

In our family, allowance is not tied to chores. The kids get allowance so they can learn how to handle money. We start them off when they’re about three years old, with $1.25 a week – the amount required to buy one item at the dollar store, including tax. At first, that’s all they need – they collect their allowance and then spend it at the dollar store as quickly as possible. Queen Bee was so bad with her money and with delaying gratification that we used to give her her allowance en route to the dollar store. We’d start walking and then about a block from the store we’d give her her dollar and a quarter. Even that was difficult for her – having to wait the time it took to walk one whole block before she could spend her money! – but she gradually learned to hang on to her money in a more or less responsible manner and wait more or less patiently until an opportunity for spending arose.

After a year (Cat) or two or three (Queenie) of getting $1.25 allowance, the kids start to learn to save their money. Usually it happens by accident – they get their allowance but we don’t make it to the dollar store one week – and they’re amazed to discover that when we go to the store the following week, they can get TWO items! After repeating this lesson a few times, the kids start to get the idea – bigger rewards can be had by saving their money for a period of time.

Tonka has just now reached this milestone. I helped him along a little by giving him a boost in his allowance the past couple of weeks. I knew he was accumulating some coins, and I was hoping to spur him on to greater savings. Sure enough, this morning he came to me with the cheap SpongeBob fanny pack he uses as a wallet. The fanny pack was just about bursting with coins. We carefully counted it out and Tonka looked relieved when I announced he had about $7.00. “We need to go to the store,” he told me. “I’m buying a book.”

Mama knows a learning opportunity when she hears it. We went to the store. Tonka did indeed have just enough money to pay for a book that he’s had his eye on for months. He hadn’t even told me he was saving to buy it. For all I know it was accidental – “Hey, Mom says I have seven dollars, and that’s the amount I need to buy that book I want.” But it doesn’t matter, because now he knows what can happen when you save your money.

Magic. Sheer magic.