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Sunday, August 31, 2008
Budgeting leads to entrepreneurial kids
Do your kids contribute to the family’s bottom line? Are they little entrepreneurs?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Let me start by assuring you that no one in our family has lost their job and we’re not in any type of financial straits. However, like many American families who are paying higher prices at the pumps and in the grocery store, we are feeling the uncertainty in the American economy and are tightening our belts.
We created a budget about three months ago to help us stop spending frivolously and save even more of the money we are earning. We talked with our children about the new family budget, and it’s had quite an effect.
We didn’t want to scare them but we did want them to appreciate that you can’t just buy every little thing you want. You have to prioritize and look for good deals. (We’ve talked about these concepts before but at 5 and 7 they finally seem to be understanding.)
The kids are not worried about our finances because they’re not eating, or because they don’t have clothes to wear. They are thinking about them because we are not buying them a whole bunch of unnecessary stuff anymore. Concerned by our constant mantra of “It’s not in the budget,” they have started coming up with ways to supplement our income.
As I mentioned in last week’s column, my 5-year-old son has taken to giving me money that he has found. He’s constantly handing me my own change that he found in a bin in the kitchen, lost in the basement and then re-found contributing it to our cause. (I do like that he was willing to share it and wasn’t just building his own private war chest.) He’s also keeping his eyes open in my car and in the backyard.
Walsh’s second plan focuses on a get-rich-quick scheme. (I’m pretty sure I have a future lottery player on my hands.) He says he saw on a commercial that Trix Yogurt is having a contest where you can win $10,000, and he wants us to enter. (I’m not sure what he saw on TV but I cannot find this offer on their web site.). He repeatedly says, “If we could only win the $10,000 we wouldn’t have to be on a budget anymore.”
He demanded we sit down and write a letter to the Trix company to be entered into the sweepstakes. I told him he’d have to write it. After “Dear Trix” he was ready to move on to something else. He told me I could finish the letter.
My 7-year-old Rose is relying on a more traditional avenue of wealth — her grandmother. While on a recent shopping trip with her Mimi, she suggested that Mimi could buy her a shirt she wanted because “she’s not on a budget.”
Mimi tried to explain that she is on a budget saving for retirement. However, Mimi did buy her the shirt.
The kids have other money-raising plans that are less dependent on other people and more entrepreneurial. I feel like I’m living with Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney and they’ve got a farm to save. But in our case instead of putting on a big show in the barn, they plan to go door-to-door selling drawings of red and white Pokemon balls.
I’m not sure who the mastermind is behind this plan but I woke up last Sunday morning to their plotting. After which Rose spent several hours drawing these pictures of Pokemon balls and then cutting them out. All 18 of them are sitting on my desk until one of us agrees to take the kids around to the neighbors to sell them.
I’m not sure what the demand is for this product on the open market, but I feel fairly certain there is no competition to worry about.
Despite their pleas we’ll continue to stick to our new family budget — at least until that Trix money pans out or someone buys up all of our one-of-a-kind, hand-drawn pictures of Pokemon balls.
You can reach Theresa by emailing her at ajcmomania@gmail.com.
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