Raeshal explains how she teaches her son that money has priorities.
As a parent, I understand that teaching your children about money can be an uphill battle. Listen as I explained how I used my son's "buy me more" question as a teachable moment. I also share how you can do the same.
Mentioned in Episode
This transcript was slightly edited and shortened for readability.
Hello, hello, hello, and happy new year. Yes! We made it. We made it through last year, and we made it through the year before. Thank you all for listening, and I hope that this year is a wonderful year for you.
So, let us get started. Today we are talking about teaching your kids priorities as far as money is concerned. A couple of days ago my son asked me for Minecraft. So, he got a new cell phone for Christmas which most people would be like Oh my gosh that is you know an expensive cost or whatever. But what happened was I had another person on my family account, and then I decided to remove that person. The easiest way to remove that person from the family account was to just transfer their number to a different phone and then change the phone number. That way you know how complicated it is sometimes to get out of a cell phone contract.
If you bought a phone recently with that plan or whatever so you are not really under a contract with the cell phone company, but you do have to pay off the balance of the phone to get out of it. So instead of paying off the balance of the phone you just took another phone and transferred that number to it. It was a whole thing but anyway so that resulted in my son getting a cell phone for Christmas. Granted he had already had a cell phone in the past which was just one of my old phones. And um I got it activated for him he had it for over a year I think about fourteen 15 months. And then he lost it at school. I was not mad at him for losing it I am just going, to be honest. I was surprised that he kept the first one if he did. it has been about four or five months, and he has been like mom you know you could turn my phone off whenever you want you to know I deserve my punishment or whatever. So, because he owned up to it and I felt like he understood the value of the money that went into the phone, and he understood the process the phone was not free, and I feel like a part of him was not being careless.
I did buy him another phone. Now if you have ever listened to my Co-parenting podcast episode you have not, I would suggest you listen to it. Especially if you are Co-parenting. His dad was like NO, but I did not listen. Obviously, because he did get the phone. I did not buy it for him immediately. Not like at Christmas. he only had it for about a week. So, I did buy Minecraft when he first got the phone. But then he asked me to buy some upgrade stuff for Minecraft. I told him no.
My son does not get an allowance. Um, he does get money to learn how to buy, save, and spend, but he does not get an allowance. Well, not a consistent dollar amount on a consistent day. I have taught that allowance method, and I feel like that does work for most parents. Especially in the beginning when you are trying to teach your kids about money.
But my son is nine and you know that is not old. For most parents, that is when you will start teaching your kids about money. But I started teaching my son about money with his first words. So, he was like one almost two. So, once he started talking, I started teaching him about money. He is responsible. And most of the money he gets is not in the form of an allowance, but he gets a lot of money from his grandpa, his aunties, uncles, and stuff like that. So, what we do is we put that money in the bank, and then occasionally, I will take some of the money and let him spend it. And he keeps money in the bank account, and he also has a Piggy Bank at home. He does well at managing his money in the Piggy Bank. So, I hardly ever take money out of the bank account. We are to the point now where the money in his bank account is going towards his college fund. Because I do not see him using it in the next eight years that is how good he is with money.
So, when he asked me to buy the Minecraft stuff, I could have been like you have money in your account; you have money in your Piggy Bank; Yes, you can get it. But I did not do that.
I told him No. Why did I tell him no? And I did not use the word no. What I said was it is the beginning of the month we have more important things we must focus on right now; however, come back at the end of the month and we will see what we have left. Why did I phrase it like that? You do not want to teach your kids that money is lacking. Even if it is. You do not want to word it in a way where they do not think that you have enough. Because you do not want to give them the mindset that money is a finite thing. And that there is a limited amount. Because that is not true. The truth is there is a lot of money everywhere all the time. But we are not pulling it into our existence, into our circle, into our household, into our part of the universe. I do not want to teach my son lack. I think I have told you before, and you know do not use lack words. Do not use limitation words when it comes to money. You want to teach your kids that money is in an abundance. It is all around us. Money comes in a cycle, and to make more money you must find ways to provide value to people. That is what entrepreneurs do. Entrepreneurs find the value that they can offer to people. Big businesses find the value that they can offer people too.
We do not always go to McDonald's because the food is great. Granite the food is good, but people do not always go there because the food is good. People go there because it is convenient, and it is fast. Right? Think about it. I can go through this drive-through and be in this drive-through hopefully for less than six minutes and have a meal for everyone in my household and get to my next destination. Right? You go there because it is fast, and it is convenient. There's a McDonald's everywhere. The same thing with places like Waffle House, or I do not know, Arby's, Wendy's, add whatever fill in the blank restaurant you want to add.
You know; when you are talking to your kids, and you are teaching them about the money you are teaching them that there is not a lack. Right? because there is always going to be some coming in even if some is going out. Now I know with everything that happened last year and the year before you know saying that sounds good. And a lot of people were like I did not know where my next dollar was going to come from. But if you are listening to this that means you survived. You went through it. You dealt with it. You moved on.
I wanted my son to be on this one on this episode, but he is not being bothered with me right now. OK, so nothing happened. He is just being a kid in his kid mood. And he just did not want to be bothered with this. You know my other son was the one that was really into the podcasting, being in mommy episodes, and doing stuff with me. But now that he is not here anymore… he lives with his dad I guess I have to do these by myself. Hopefully, I can talk my son into doing these with me sometimes. But yes, I wanted you to hear his thoughts on the conversation that we had about him, and him waiting, and it not being a priority right now.
Teach your kids that the bills are important and those are priorities. There are differences between needs and wants. And that what he wanted was a want and not a need. He already had the basic Minecraft. So, he can start and build his world, and do whatever you got to do in his little technology center. And you know he could still be creative. He did not have to have all the upgrades. By him hearing a non-no “No” he knows that he might get it, but he does not know exactly what. So, he is already plotted in his mind that he is going to come back to me at the end of the month. How do I know that? Because when I told him it is the beginning of the month. We have other more important things we need to handle right now, but maybe at the end of the month. He asked me what day of the week it was. What day of the month it was, and then he asked me how many days this month had? So I already know come you know the 25th or 28th or the 30th of this month he is going to be knocked on my door asking me if he can get this upgrade to his Minecraft. And at that point, I will give him an honest answer. It may be yes there may be no. I will not know until I get closer to that date. But when I figure that out, he will be the first to know. And I will be able to get him to come and tell you his perspective of this event. And what he learned from it. as a parent, I have come to find that our kids do not want to be bothered with us all the time. Now, whenever he asks me a question where the answer can be money-related I just answer it. But I always try to use it as a teaching moment as well. could I have said yes? Yes. I could have. Did I want to say yes not really, because when he is asking for it is an upgrade but it is also a member? So, it wasn't a one-time thing it was something I felt like we need to be planned out.
He does have his Kiddie debit card that he can use. It has real money on it is a real visa for kids. I went with this step program and step.com. I think you can click on the link in the description below to get the link for it. It does not have fees. I like the fact that it did not have fees because some of the other Kiddie cards that I research had fees. And I did not think that with them being kids they should have to calculate their fees as well. I like it is a clean smooth transaction. Then I can see on my phone app when he is buying, and he can see on his phone what he is buying and how much money is left.
So, what I might end up doing; is keeping a few dollars on his card. And if we do decide to do a yes and let it become a membership once again. I will use it as another life teaching lesson. Where he can budget how much money he has on his card, and how much money he is spending every month. Because if that is coming out every month he is going to have to keep up with his transactions. Or he could not overdraft but have it where it bounces back. And the upgrade would delete from his phone. so, it might be worth it just for that teaching opportunity. But other than that, I probably wouldn't have done it.
Thank you, guys, for listening to uh another episode of Podkash Kids, and once again happy new year.