By Steve Rosen
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Do you have conversations with your youngster that go like this?
Kid: "I need $20 for pizza and a movie with my friend."
Dad: "Why are you asking me for money? What happened to the $10 allowance you get each week? And weren't you just paid for baby-sitting down the street last weekend?"
Kid: "No way, Dad. I spent my allowance already, and I'm not spending that baby-sitting money. That's my money."
The outcome of this exchange is pretty predictable at many households, including mine. Dad's buttons are pushed like a personal automated-teller machine, and the dough is forked over.
Escaping cycle
How do parents get out of the Bank of Dad (or Mom) cycle? It's certainly not easy. But like most everything with parenting, a little bit of communication and flexibility and a willingness to say "no" can go a long way toward getting kids out of the habit of constantly tapping into your vault.
"Unless you plan to be the bank for the rest of your life, nip this habit in the bud early," said author and children's financial expert Neale Godfrey.
Age 3 is a good age to start talking to kids about money - where it comes from and what it can buy, said Godfrey, chairman of Children's Financial Network. That's also a good time to set up an allowance so the child has spending money.
If your child gets an allowance on Sunday, spends it all by Tuesday and then hits you up for more money, remind him about the spending choices he made, Godfrey said.
Say that the allowance will be paid again on the weekend, or perhaps provide an opportunity for the kid to earn money doing chores. Or consider making a loan and attaching a repayment plan.
Fruitful discussions
That could lead to a discussion about the enjoyment - or lack of it - that resulted from the spending. Maybe the requests for handouts won't occur so frequently and the child will learn about buying power and saving.
"When we continue to rescue our children and bail them out of situations, we retard their development into becoming self-reliant individuals," said longtime Kansas City, Mo., educator Tony Strub.
Parents might also consider discussing the family's spending plan to reinforce money concepts, said Craig Israelsen, associate professor of consumer and family economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Israelsen uses Monopoly money to teach his seven kids. He starts with $5,000 of play money and pays it out as if covering real expenses, such as the mortgage and groceries. After necessities are paid for, there's a little pile left for discretionary spending.
"I explain to the kids that that's the pile where their requests for extra money have to come out of," Israelsen said. "It... blows them away."
Copyright © 2001 The Seattle Times Company
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