Recently, I was hanging out with a cousin and his three boys. I think that makes them cousins too, once removed, or some weird family label that I don’t know, nor do I care.
Anyway, my cousin started giving them allowance for doing chores. The oldest earns $20 a month, the middle child earns $15.00 and the youngest $10.00.
A lesson in government spending:
So we are out and about and the oldest says to his dad, “I need to go to the store and get a present for my friend X, the birthday party is next week.”
“What do you want to get?”
“A fifteen dollar gift card.”
“That’s fine, but you’re paying for it out of your allowance.”
The kid frowns at this but says nothing. Later we go to the store, and the boy buys a $10.00 gift card instead of a $15.00.
I smile when I see this and I ask my young cousin why he spent ten instead of fifteen.
He says, “Because it was my money.”
A lesson in socialism and the gender pay gap:
At one point the middle child complains to my cousin, “It isn’t fair that my brother makes more money than I do.”
My cousin points out the obvious, “He gets paid more because he does more.”
“He does more, because he’s bigger and can do more. I should make the same amount of money because I’m smaller and can’t do as much.”
The problem when someone gets something for free:
The two younger boys had a plan to buy a video game together by pooling their money. They had just gotten their allowance and figured in another month they would be able to buy the game.
However, the middle child was getting increasingly frustrated because his younger brother was buying soda, candy and any other treat that he could get his hands on.
I asked their father, “You’re not going to stop him?”
He shook his head, “Nope its his money and if he blows it all in one day, that’s his problem.”
The middle child was trying to remonstrate with his sibling, “We had a deal. Stop buying candy or we’re never going to get the video game.”
He begged and plead with his brother, to no avail.
At some point in the afternoon, the middle child gave up and started buying candy and junk himself. I said to him, “I thought you were saving your money for a video game.”
“I was, with my brother,” The boy said, his eyes actually narrowed, “but he’s spending everything.”
“You could still save your money, it would just take another month or so.”
The boy looked at me for a moment and then said, “Why should I do that? My brother will get to play the game too and he won’t have paid anything and gotten candy too.”
