Money Smarts You Can Learn From Kids
Kids sure are learning quickly these days. Between the internet and cable TV, youngsters tend to pick up a lot of stuff that in our days, we wouldn’t even begin to know about until later in life. Some of the info they manage to glean can be pretty interesting (for instance, my three-year-old already knows several Spanish words thanks to Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer), if not downright useful.
That said, I’m also amazed at how much kids can teach their parents in turn just by being themselves. I’m a work-at-home mom myself, and I’ve had the pleasure of being able to observe my sons, ages 6 and 3, at close range while they are unaware of it. I must say that the monetary lessons I’ve learned from them are just as valuable as any of the personal finance tips that I’ve come across in blogs and magazines. Let me share with you some of them:
- The best things in life are free. It’s cliché, I know. But the more I think about it, the more I’ve realized that this maxim is nowhere near as evidently practiced than in the lives of innocent kids.
Whenever it rains, my boys are always asking me to allow them to run around in the rain and while I’m usually hesitant about it, the shrieks of pleasure I hear when I finally cave in overrides whatever concerns I have about their catching colds or slipping on the ground. Not that I still wouldn’t love having a pool in the house, but for the kids at least, a good frolic in the pouring rain will do the trick as well.
- Cheap can also be good. I can’t exactly remember at what stage in my life it was when I started to think that the good stuff always came with a hefty price tag but since then, that has always been my mindset; and this is true for many adults as well. For kids however, what is good is whatever brings them enjoyment.
I’ve all too often made the mistake of buying toys for my kids which we could barely afford just for the satisfaction of knowing we gave the “best” to them. Well, I’ve also been disappointed many times when my gifts were met with enthusiasm that wasn’t any different from the other “unbranded” toys they received. Now I’m not saying that we should just forgo of the more expensive things in life even if we have the means to afford them and just think cheap, affordable, discounts, sales, etc. But then again, with an economic recession on our hands, it never hurts to adopt the kids’ way of thinking once in a while, and settle for less than best.
- Don’t count out the nickels and dimes. My husband and I often talk to the kids about plans of buying a new car, but we were always careful to emphasize that this would be something that would happen in the future yet as we have not saved enough for it. As soon as the goal of “saving up for the new car” firmed up in their minds however, they became quite enthusiastic about the plan (not even about the car, but more so about the saving part), putting in whatever small bills and change they manage to wangle from their grandparents or earn from doing odd “jobs” in the house, into their coin banks. We’re still nowhere near owning that dream car, but perhaps if we show even half of the zest that the young ones are doing with their nickels and dimes, we could probably get there much faster.
- Money shouldn’t be too complicated. With kids, a simple “we don’t have money for that” is taken as is. Of course, oftentimes a parent’s “no” is met with whines or tantrums or sulking for older kids, but after sometime, young children can readily come to terms with the fact that they can’t get what they want and just move on to other endeavors. Not so with adults. Every so often (or is it too often?), a “we don’t have money for that” is converted to “let’s just charge it to the credit card” – an ill-advised move considering the skyrocketing credit card interest rates these days. Why not simplify things and just let a no be a no, as kids do.
We’ve often heard about letting kid be kids, but why not let adults be kids for a change – that is, when it comes to dealing with personal finance. If only we could somehow acquire a bit of children’s resiliency in money matters, life could be so much simpler and perhaps, less stressful.
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