When my daughter was still pre kindergarten, and we were struggling financially, shopping was a nightmare of "I wants." (My babysitter had trained her to keep her hands behind her back so we could walk through the most expensive crystal with no worry of breakage).
One payday I brought home my meager paycheck in $1 bills and put them on the table. Her eyes lit up. "Let's go shopping."
"Not so fast I said. First we need money for rent." I took out the weekly portion towards the rent. I continued with food, lights, telephone, daycare, my big allowance of 25 cents per day for a Coke to go with my home-packed lunch and bus fare into Boston where I had my first professional job as an underpaid copywriter. We had something about $1.32 disposal income.
From then on she never asked if she could buy, but if we could afford. As the years went by and my salary went up so did our disposal income.
I always thought I was good with money. However, my daughter is wonderful with it. And I was really impressed when she did the food shopping this weekend. Her $107 purchases came to a total a $57 outlay between coupons and buy one get one free deals. Nothing in her bag was unneeded or unwanted.
Some of it may be because of those early days of tight money, but I suspect more is just wisdom on her part.
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