Spend. Save. Shame.
What's up with teaching kids about money?
It was totally my fault.
We were in the wave pool at the Great Wolf Lodge in the Wisconsin Dells—a water park precisely designed to send kids into raptures and parents into low-rent penury—when my seven year old’s long-wiggly front tooth popped. He held it up triumphantly, blood trickling down his chin, and conversation quickly turned to whether the Tooth Fairy would even know he’d lost it and, if so, whether she’d be able to find him.
With that resolved (yes and yes) I insisted on placing the tooth in the zip pocket of my swim trunks—the safest available location. Until it wasn’t. Hours later the tooth was mysteriously gone and I was distraught, although my eldest was non-plussed as he’d swallowed his last tooth and still scored some cold hard cash.
His going rate per tooth had been $1 but guilt presumably led the Tooth Fairy to slip $5 under his hotel-room pillow for this one. It came in handy a day later, when he asked for yet another Minecraft skin or world or mod or whatever it was, and I reminded him I’d just spent $185 at the penny arcade to “win” tickets which were then traded for two toys with a combined value of maybe $10.
“But let me ask you this,” I said, thinking on my feet. “The Minecraft world you want is $5.99. I’m happy to get it for you if you want to buy it. Do you have any money?”
“Um … yes! The $5 the Tooth Fairy left me!”
“Well, it’s not quite enough but we’ll call it even. And this is how the world works: you make money and if you need or want something and you’re able to afford it, you can buy it.”
He was ecstatic, his Minecraft universe expanded, and I felt like a valuable step on the ladder of financial literacy had been scaled. Dad of the Year status restored!
A few days later, he began asking about using money from his piggybank to buy himself “maybe a Pusheen or a Lego or a Nerf gun.” To me, this sounded just fine: he’s long had money in a piggybank in his bedroom at his mum’s house that resulted from people slipping in a $5, $10, or $20 note now and then.
But as I’ve evolved on the Nerf gun issue—I still see absolutely no reason for kids to to pretend to shoot each other1, but I also know I’d rather he be outside laughing and having fun with his friends than parked in front of an iPad—I texted his mum just to make sure we were aligned should he deploy his piggybank funds for that purpose.
“My stance is his birthday is a month away,” came the terse reply.
“Even when he’s talking about spending his own money?” I texted back.
“That money is NOT money earned. If he’d like to start taking about doing chores and earning an allowance, I’m happy to set up a spend, save, donate system for him.”
The exchange disturbed me on multiple levels. First, the money in the piggy bank is his. Of course it is. If we declare it’s not, we’re both confusing him and imposing some bizarre restriction that money he receives isn’t actually his, nor is how it’s earned or used. Second, spend, save, donate? Seriously?
This approach to teaching kids about financial responsibility is everywhere, notably advanced by the US government and that even more influential institution: Elmo. The idea is every time a child earns money or receives an allowance, it’s split between three “buckets”: one to spend, one to save, and one to give away (some use “share” to keep the alliteration alive). Proponents claim it’s a “simple and powerful way to help your kids develop good money habits.”
I’m not even close to being sure about that. Right off the bat, it reinforces the notion money you’ve earned isn’t really yours. That may be sort of acceptable and understandable to an adult (instead of “donate” or “share,” just call this category “tax”), but for the malleable mind of a seven year old? It seems to suggest we’re teaching kids they can’t be trusted to control their finances—or, at a minimum, that they’re expected to adopt the commandment of tithing without the entertainment value of hearing the story about the con artist who was visited by an angel who directed him to a book made of golden plates but then told him never to show them to anyone and ... yada yada yada … now you’re a Mormon.2
Like a lot of parenting techniques, it also removes independence from the child in favor of parent-imposed beliefs. Of course, that’s essential when it comes to pushing your kids to become Formula One drivers or telling them they may want to support a team other than the lovable loser Buffalo Bills. But it’s not OK when we don’t trust kids to either do the right thing or are so intent on them not making mistakes that we never give them the opportunity to learn. If a child wants to blow $50 on water balloons instead of assiduously placing $20 in the spending jar, $20 in savings, and $10 in sharing, what’s the problem? How else will they really understand the value of money?
Third, it’s a classic case of expecting children to do as we say, not as we do. How many parents implementing “spend, save, share” are setting aside a percentage of their income for others? Sure, there are taxes. But that’s not what’s being advanced here: the suggestion is “kids naturally love helping others … their share bucket empowers them to lend a hand and do some good in the world.” But … they’re not lending a hand; they’re throwing money at something. Wouldn’t volunteering to help those less fortunate be a far more tangible way of modeling the power of empathy, compassion, and sharing? Spoiler alert: “donating” your most precious and irreplaceable finite resource—time—is much harder than buying virtuousness.
Finally, at least for this non-American-born citizen, it reinforces one of the weirder aspects of living here: the notion that it’s perfectly normal to outsource basic services. The United States is, infamously, very good at making the wealthy wealthier while reneging on what should be the foundational responsibility of any government: providing a safety net of basic services for citizens. No universal healthcare. No guaranteed paid or parental leave. No accessible, affordable childcare. Americans weirdly accept a lot of this as the price of … er, “freedom” … and look to non-profits, charities, and especially religious organizations to make up the difference. Except, they don’t. Money goes in, some services pop out, but the country remains mediocre on pretty much every metric that matters.
So, let’s recap. You teach kids the value of saving—great. You teach them spending money can buy them things they value—perfect. And you ask them to share money in an act that doesn’t teach them the value of giving their time, doesn’t tangibly show them what their money buys them, doesn’t reflect in any way the behavior of those asking them to hand over their money, and doesn’t teach them anything other than to feel ashamed of wanting to retain what they’ve earned.
Spend. Save. Shame. What could possibly go wrong?
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.
I also know there’s no correlation between toy guns and the layer use of real ones—we all pretended when we were young. It’s a function of way deeper issues, especially around feeling loved and of value.