Wednesday, April 10, 2013

give. save. spend.

charlie {6} came home from school and asked if he could buy a penny skateboard with his own money, which he has had carefully stashed away in a super mario wallet from six years of birthdays and tooth fairies. knowing that he had enough saved, and had never asked to buy anything before i said sure right away. and then added an 'i'll speak to your dad about it' to cover my bases... {and told myself that there must be some skater boys who pop their collars on their polo shirts, right?}

when i mentioned it to the hubby, he said he'd talk to him, and i promptly forgot all about it. until i came down from putting the girls to bed and found them hunched over some pieces of paper and markers at the counter, learning about money. i shouldn't have been surprised, since the hubby isn't just an intentional and hands on dad, he's also a financial advisor. they explained that the three things you can do with money are give, save and spend and that charlie had written down what he thinks the reasons are that we do each. he then was asked to rank them in order of importance.





next charlie took out his life savings, $71, in ones and fives, and was asked to decide how much money to put in each category - how much he wanted to give, how much he wanted to save and how much money he wanted to spend!


we left it totally up to him and after much deliberation he had $28 on give, $25 on save and $18 on spend.


 charlie was happy with his choices, surprisingly even after he realized with some disappointment that he no longer had enough money to buy his coveted penny skateboard.  we carefully put the money away in envelopes  and talked about how we would continue to follow this procedure whenever charlie earned more money {or lost more teeth!}.


my favorite part of the night was when the end when hubby told charlie to add up the amounts in give and save, and said he would give him that amount, and would continue to double any money he decided to give or save in the future. which means two things - first that i lucked out with a husband who is an exceptional dad who takes the time to really teach important lessons and....

skateboard! 



1 comment:

  1. What a beautiful story! I wish I had been taught that financial lesson when I was six! Congrats and best wishes for happy & safe skating!

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