You Can't Have It
The best time to introduce kids to budgeting is before their first cellphones, when you are still their world, the shining star that radiates all kinds of wisdom.
What also helps is capitalizing on their impatience to be grown-up. For example, giving them money to pay for groceries is a high. They feel like adults when cashiers address them directly, give them the change and say have a nice day.
Credit and debit cards are money, a form of payment, but paper money is more tangible. It has colors that represent limits: green, brown, red or blue notes. Teaching your kids budgeting at an early age also helps you, because older kids will advise younger brothers and sisters.
“Mom doesn’t have money for Bobby Bear. We’ll buy it next time.”
The stress is paper money because of the limit, the very essence of budgeting. Mama used to sit us around the dining table and explain that my sister will get new shoes first because hers had been repaired to death and the shoemaker couldn’t perform miracles. We understood and waited our turn.
Times have changed. There are all kinds of incentives to buy now, have now, upgrade now. It is therefore difficult for parents to explain that credit and debit cards also have a limit because kids are so used to seeing them swiping cards for toys, sneakers, hamburgers and theme park rides.
Budgeting can be fun and educational. Be creative as you can to make kids understand early in life that a waterfall dries up when rivers are empty because of drought.
But mom why should we have a budget?
Because everything has a budget, including the government, the big spender.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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