-- "Mom, did you steal my money and buy a duck neck?" ”
When I watched "The Boy Says" before, I was extremely impressed by this scene. On the one hand, I was laughed to death by the reason that "my mother stole the baby's money to buy a duck neck", on the other hand, I really sighed at the courage of this boy who "exposed" my mother in public!
Image from the web
After all! Every child who has taken the money has once scorned the tricks of his parents and dared to be angry. The Spring Festival of 2022 has passed, how much money has your child received? How do you deal with your child's money?
Today's article by Guo Ren Ma, sharing a mother's witty approach, is of great significance - she divides the money into three parts: paying pocket money, planning family activities and savings and investments, and then leaving it to the children to dispose of. In this process, children not only gradually learn how to spend money, but also understand the meaning and value of money.
5 and 6-year-old children, it is the time when the concept of numbers and computing power are getting better and better, they can distinguish the size of 1 yuan and 100 yuan, and can calculate how much is spent and how much is left.
My children can receive about 2,000 years of money per year. Before the age of 6, I kept the money on my behalf. After I was 6 years old, I started to discuss with them how to distribute my own money.
We divided the old age money into three parts: paying pocket money, planning family activities, savings and investment, after repeated experiments on the two babies, I found that this way of distributing the old age money works well, and I share it with you today.
1. Pay pocket money
After going to elementary school, Eva began to have her own pocket money. It is sent once a week for 5 yuan each time, with an average of 20 a month and 250 a year.
In order to increase the sense of ceremony, I also specially replaced the red Grandpa Mao with a bunch of purple 5 yuan, and when the money was sent every week, the baby's eyes flashed in the past moment.
Courtesy of the author
The figure "5 bucks" is also well thought out. On the one hand, it can indeed buy something, such as pencils, erasers, rulers, which are the daily school supplies needed by the baby; on the other hand, it really can't buy anything, such as the toy field that the baby is most concerned about, and the Ultraman card and small sticker are barely in line.
And how to spend this part of the money, I only gave two words: casual. These are definitely two words of magic, and I say it generously, and he listens with great pride. After all, for the first time in my hand, I have the right to completely dispose of my own money, just thinking about it, I smile.
In the first three months, Eva took 5 yuan a week, bought small snacks, small stickers, small cards, small toys, once the money arrived, it would definitely be spent on the same day, and even shared his pleasure of "having fun in time".
But soon, he found that everything he could buy for 5 yuan was almost the same...
Once when I was taking him to the supermarket, he was eyeing a bunch of Transformers in the toy district, but each one was expensive. Just when he was about to throw up and not leave, I whispered in his ear, "You have money now, you can buy it yourself!" ”
Look at the more expensive toys, the author provided the picture
Probably because of the preparation of their own spending money in the early stage, coupled with the desire to want toys catalyzed, the most simple savings concept of "saving money" was thus unlocked.
So after he carefully selected a Transformer, the days of 5 yuan a week began from spending to feeding the piggy bank.
It is very interesting that when he takes money about once a week, he will experience the contradiction of whether to spend it or save money to buy toys, and this "sunk cost" investment also inadvertently increases his expectations of toys, so that he has obviously saved enough money to buy Transformers, and he hesitates. He caught a closer look at a more expensive engineering car next to him, a more expensive remote control car, a toy submachine gun, a Lego...
So much so that he hadn't spent the money in a year. I don't think cheekily, do you want to show him the price of the iPad, so that for the next ten years, I don't have to worry about his addiction to games.
Tangled up whether to buy, the author provided the picture
It may also be because of the word "casual" at the beginning that I forced myself not to interfere with his consumption behavior, so that I could take a step back and stand aside and see the role of pocket money from the perspective of an observer.
Through such a small range of testing the waters, I do not have to worry that the baby will instantly "learn bad" when she has a huge amount of money, but also in the process, let him establish the most basic and direct relationship concept between money and commodities - understand the role of money, open up the trick to "save" savings, and delay the satisfaction of more "luxurious" desires.
There is also an added bonus, that is, every time you count money, it is a ready-made mathematical application problem.
2. Plan family activities
The baby receives the old age money, and the parents have to give the baby money to others. Obviously, the adults exchanged with each other and went through the motions, but the children still tried to take it for themselves... I guess that's why my mom was so righteous when she pressed me for my money.
However, since it has been a great righteousness to return the old money to the children, let them take out some, such as 20% as a contribution to participate in family collective activities, not too much.
At first, the baby was not happy, but once she took the money, she became a sponsor of family activities, and although the naming rights and advertising investment were not attractive to them, the right to decide what activities to carry out made them willing to pay for it, after all, going to the zoo, playground, and movie theater was much more interesting than going to extracurricular classes.
When my brother reached the age of 8, he unlocked a new achievement – he could apply for a budget and independently plan family activities according to the amount.
It started out as a simple weekend activity, like a family going outside to get out. On the one hand, it is necessary to calculate all the costs, including road expenses and catering expenses, on the other hand, it is necessary to plan the process of the activity, what time to go out, what mode of transportation to use, where to eat, and what time to go home.
The first planning that can't bear to be seen, the author provided the picture
In the first few times, I also inevitably had to provide them with some off-site help, such as how to use the map app to find out the most appropriate action route and transportation method; such as how to use the per capita consumption of the hotel on the review app to predict whether the budget was enough; and for example, some unexpected situations, the time schedule caused by traffic jams was disrupted, and the brother who did not order food according to the routine caused by the budget was over budgeted, how to deal with it, and so on.
After practicing a few times, it is obvious that the baby needs less and less off-site help in the process, and when making a budget, she also learns to leave a suitable flexible space, and the key is that it is more and more handy to deal with the cost of a small hundred at a time.
From the simplest single activity of going to dinner and going to the movies, to the more complicated all-day activities of going to the zoo, going to the museum, and going to the playground, the amount of budget that the baby has to deal with is getting bigger, the details to be considered are constantly changing, and the activities to be organized are constantly becoming more complex.
Later, when the part of the baby's old age money was spent, I was willing to hand over the part of the family activity fee that I should pay to them. Maybe in two years, it seems that it is not impossible for them to plan a trip independently.
Brother's budget table, courtesy of the author
As the amount of money that the baby can handle is small to large, the consumption method faced by it is from simply buying things to planning activities, in this gradual process, the baby continues to learn the correct way to spend money.
More importantly, this approach will transform children from passive participants in family activities to active organizers, with a great sense of presence and ritual.
Their pocket money is only to buy things for themselves, but the money in the family is actually spent on everyone, the money itself has not changed, but the use of money is not limited to the purchase of goods, but also to do more happy and happy things.
3. Saving and investing
"You're still young, and your mother keeps all this money for you!"
For example, more than 50% of my family's money was saved, and I also officially opened a bank card for my child and really deposited this money in his name.
In order to explain to him the meaning of saving, I specially took them to read a lot of financial and business picture books, such as "The Crow Bakery", "When animals have money", "Children's Economics: Financial Quotient", "Little Rabbit Learns to Save Money", "Financial Management Is Really Fun", "Puppy Money Money"... Wait a minute.
Station B has a special financial enlightenment animation for children aged 6-12, called "Buffett's Mysterious Club", which is about several children encountering various problems related to money in their lives, under the leadership of Buffett (in the cartoon is Buffett dubbing himself) grandfather, one by one to solve, by the way to learn economic knowledge.
We watched the episode "Lawn & Order" about how a child can expand his business of cleaning yards for others by saving money for a lawn mower.
Since the experience of saving money for a year to buy Transformers, our baby has gradually realized that the purpose of saving money is actually to be able to afford to buy better things in the future.
So I imagined with him many important nodes where he would need money in the future, such as going to college, buying a house, marrying a daughter-in-law... Although it is a little distant, it does not affect his feelings in the slightest, Mom, how many years does this have to be saved.
Taking advantage of his hesitation, I immediately leaned over the salesman and began to calculate with him: "You see, now this money is stored in the bank, there is interest every year, it will become more, but it will increase very slowly." If you buy investment and financial management, there will be more income every year, and when you graduate from high school, there will be so much, and when you graduate from college, there will be so much! ”
He didn't understand what "investment and wealth management" meant, but the two eyes that turned into money bags convinced me that I had a money fan.
In short, whether it is a one-time or a phased batch, the pressure money must finally be handed over to the child.
In this way, I let children start to deal with "money" from an early age - from small pocket money, to planning family activities, to savings and financial management, to create a step-by-step creation of "spending opportunities", so that children can establish a correct view of consumption and money earlier.