MOM'S MONEY MOMENTS
Kids these days are very smart! Don’t we hear this all the time? What we don’t hear is that they need smarter parents. Today’s kids are actually far superior than those decades ago in the way they pick up knowledge or technology, lead the family in a shopping mall and above all spot the shine of coins early on. Kids get to know money quickly these days leaving parents wondering how to make their kids moneywise.
Moneyquin invited Vaishali Shinde, mother of a ten-year-old, to share her experience in helping her daughter Tanmaya develop money discipline. She feels kids pick up spending and saving habits by watching their parents and cautions that parents must put their foot down when children’s demand become unreasonable. Read her…
“…Going back a few years, I recall Tanmaya’s very first encounter with money was a bit dramatic. She was seven years old and she had this thing of losing an eraser a day in school. I tried everything to stop this trend. But nothing worked. Then it struck me. She has always had a soft corner for poor kids and old people to the extent that she at times cries seeing a child lying on the roadside. So I tried connecting the two. I told her that the day she would not lose an eraser, she would get five rupees which she could give to a poor child or an old person.
This worked dramatically. Three years later, she doesn’t lose erasers any more. These small incidents help inculcate good money habits in children. They understand the value of money. Through this incident she realised how just five rupees could make a difference in someone’s life. I strongly feel kids learn money management through such everyday experiences. They learn by observing their parents.
I started giving her pocket money or so you may call it, when she desperately needed money to buy some juice and water during her extra classes about a year ago. She gets 150 rupees as and when there’s a need. So you can’t really call it pocket money yet. It’s more need-based. But yes all the same she has money in her pocket now.
My husband and I have seen Tanmaya handle money over the last one year and now we are confident that she is a responsible child. She spends sensibly.
We trust her maturity with money. So much so that we plan to get her a credit card within the next 2-3 years. This time when we were planning a summer trip, Tanmaya surfed for the best packages available.
My husband said we can comfortably get her a credit card two-three years later. I agreed.
But yes, these days Tanmaya has a demand I won’t fulfill. She wants a mobile phone. She tried all ways to persuade us. When nothing worked she wrote a note to me expressing her desire for a mobile. She has a habit of writing notes and putting them at places where I will be able to spot and read it.
Now I too reverted with a two-page note listing the advantages and disadvantages of cell phones and how it is going to do her no good.
Here I also wrote that money is not the issue. We’ve bought you toys which cost more than a cell phone. But those toys were for your age so we bought them for you. We bought a gear cycle for her which cost 9,000 rupees. The cell that she wants to buy costs 6000 rupees. I wrote in the note that a mobile phone is for communication. “You are in the house all the time so why do you need a mobile phone. It’ll just be to show off. Tanmaya hates kids who show off. So I told her you hate friends who show off. Now aren’t you trying to show off by getting a mobile phone?”…”
