2019-2020 was an exercise in teaching our elementary school-aged children personal finance, driving independence, and encouraging them to make constrained resource decisions.
Spending one's money is a powerful activity. It triggers emotional responses of all varieties. It can be rewarding (making a long-desired, sacrificed-for major purchase), mundane (filling the gas tank), addictive (compulsive shopping), therapeutic (retail therapy), and stressful (grocery shopping while praying your card won't be rejected).
Growing up, I lived under the household rule that we kids had to announce our desired item to a parent then wait two weeks before making any given purchase. Effectively creating a cooling-off period designed to curb impulse spending, it generated a few benefits:
Our parents always had an easy way to say no without actually saying no. Oh, how much we hated the cheerful, “Ok, wait two weeks!”
Regardless, either we totally forgot about whatever item it was that we could not live without, or
We decided we didn’t want to use our money on it after all, or
Impulse buying did not exist (with reasonable carryover into adulthood purchasing patterns)
We built our executive function, helping reinforce the tremendous benefits of delaying gratification.
More importantly, the lessons these guardrails taught me have carried over well into adulthood. My sister and I are very mindful of money in different ways, resulting from how each of us internalized our parents’ personal finance lessons. I am a natural saver now, and at least until the children came onto the scene, I excelled at living well beneath my means.
We tried this whole "wait two weeks" idea for a while in the Lennon household too.
Quite honestly, it hasn’t worked well. Perhaps we started too early; perhaps we were just too disorganized around keeping track of who asked for what and when. It was exhausting saying no all the time. We decided to set this rule aside for a while and try a new tactic.
Now we let the kids use their spending money and rely on their ledgers to say no. If they have no money, they cannot spend. We don’t buy them random stuff throughout the year, though they get plenty of birthday and holiday gifts. They are not wanting. Giving them the power to choose and manage their finances is a new dimension.
After the first week of The Lennon Bank and their first allowance paycheck, the kids were ready. They looked forward to spending their money all week. We tried all kinds of approaches to deter them, including offering a $5 bonus for spending nothing, and a $2 bonus for spending the least of the three.
We tried to pin them down on exactly what they wanted so we wouldn’t be wandering the aisles of Target aimlessly for hours on end. Only Wee One could crisply articulate exactly what she wanted and where it was in the store.
It was looking like everyone wanted more Pokémon™ merch, despite our house being littered with hundreds of these blessed little cardboard cards. Husband tried every argument on earth to offer different ideas.
Why are you buying more of what you already have? How about something new?
Do you guys even play the game?
How about saving your money for the Nintendo™ Switch you were eyeing?
The kids were determined.
We headed to the store as a family. Husband set a 10 minute deadline to make their selections and get to the checkout line. Wee One found her coveted item in 12 seconds flat. Baby Girl and Little Man took the full amount of time. Ultimately we walked out of the store with $70 of Pokémon™ stuff that we did not need.
I had to bite my tongue hard. Let them spend it. Let them spend it. They have to learn on their own. No, they don't need this stuff. Let them spend it. It will be self-correcting. Keep quiet for goodness sake!! The children were elated with their newfound purchasing power and a taste of financial freedom.
Baby Girl got the $2 bonus, spending $0.60 less than her younger siblings. All three went to bed happy.
Stephanie Brooke Lennon is the author of Family Bank Blueprint, GoldQuest, and What Would Water Do? Simple Strategies for Navigating Life's Obstacles. Her titles are available in Paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com. Follow Stephanie Brooke on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Amazon, and at BrookeLennon.com.