It’s Saturday afternoon, and you’re running errands with your kids.
Your goal: To get through the next 2 hrs or so without any tantrums and no whining for anything.
You know it’s probably unlikely, but you’re hopeful.
Even though you probably know that you have a better chance of seeing the tooth fairy put money under your kid’s pillow….you still keep hope alive.
You’ve got 3 stores on your list that you gotta get to.
You pull into the parking lot of the first store. Put the car in park, pull the kids out, lock the door and head towards the front door.
So far, so good.
No whining, no fighting and no screaming.
As you’re walking into the store you’re thinking to yourself “Could this be the day!? Could this actually be the day that I’ve been dreaming about for years? A pleasant trip to the store with my kids with no arguments and no whining?”
And before you could even barely finish your thought…all you hear is “ohhh this is soo cool. Can I have this? Can you buy this for me?!…Puuhhhleeeezzze!”
And just like that, all your hopes for a day of no whining come crashing down like when someone pulls out the bottom piece in Jenga.
You try to stay calm and cool by showing no signs of irritation to your kids while mumbling under your breathe:
“Are you bleeping kidding me right now! We JUST walked into the store!”
You do your best to try to ignore it, but she just won’t let up.
She just won’t stop asking and nagging and whining.
So you politely tell her “No honey, you can’t have that. You already have something like that at home.”
And this is when all hell breaks loose.
The nagging and high pitch whining start to reach Mariah Carey decibel levels.
As she keeps asking, you keep saying No.
Next thing you know, she falls to the ground, crying, rolling around – and she’s waving her arms in the air like she just don’t care.
You’re fed up. You’ve got 2 more stores to go to and you’re only 7mins in at the first store.
And by now, you can feel the piercing looks from the judgey parents walking by.
They be looking at you like “Jeesh….what kind of parent are you? Can’t you control your kid?”
You think to yourself “Alright. I’ve had enough!”
So what do you do?
You know that if you stand your ground – it’s just gonna get worse. You’ll end up dragging your crying child up and down the isles and that’s the LAST thing you wanna deal with right now.
But if you give in – you know that she wins. She’ll get what she wants and you’ll kinda feel like you’re encouraging this type of behviour.
Soo..since time is ticking and the situation clearly isn’t getting any better – against your better judgement you make an impulse decision and you wave the white flag of defeat.
You cave and you give in.
You give her what she wants, so that you can get what you came for in peace & quiet and then get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.
And then…it happens.
In an instant – you witness a miracle.
Almost like Jesus himself came down from heaven and healed a man possessed by evil spirits.
Your daughter miraculously gets up from the ground.
Her once teared filled face is now as dry as the sand in Dubai and she’s smiling from ear to ear.
You know you just got played, but…. oh well. At least now you can get through your errands in peace.
…You must be a parent.
Situations like this are happening all over the world to hard working, caring, well intentioned parents.
Kids are conspiring against their parents to make their trips to the store a living hell.
And if you’re tired of this happening….
If you’re tired of the constant whining and asking for something every time you go out….
If you’ve ever wondered “Am I spoiling my kids every time I give in when they whine?”…
Or if you know that you don’t want to raise a spoiled and entitled child, and you want to teach them about money but just not sure how to start….
Well then, you’re in the right place!
I’m just gonna keep it real with ya….
Being a parent ain’t easy.
There’s no damn manual and at times you just wonder if you’re doing a good job.
And a lot of the time you wonder if you’re spoiling them or not.
You have thoughts like
- I want my kids to know that nothing comes for free. I want them to know that you have to work to earn money, but how do I teach them this?
- Should I give my child an allowance or pay them to do chores?
- I don’t want my kids to grow up and make the same mistakes I did with money
- I just wish they would just stop asking me for stuff every time we go out!
And I TOTALLY get it….
It’s hard trying to figure this stuff out because maybe you weren’t taught about money growing up. Most of us didn’t learn about it in school and your parents didn’t sit you down to give you any lessons.
You probably had to figure it out the hard way…by making mistakes. Or maybe you’re still trying to figure it out now.
And between dropping the kids off at school, going to work and being their personal Uber driver back and forth to all their events – you feel like you’ve barely got time to even drink your morning coffee before it gets cold, let alone try to find time to teach your kids about money.
I can totally relate.
I’ve had the exact same thoughts and I’ve gone through the exact same things.
I’m a dad of 2 young girls, so I know what it’s like.
See, us parents – we share a special bond.
That bond of knowing what it’s like to have little people barge in on you while you’re trying to go to pee in the bathroom in peace.
Yup.
Total loss of privacy.
It’s awesome isn’t it? (Can you sense my sarcasm?)
And yet still – we wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Well …out of love of course.
But, even though you deal with the loss of privacy, the tantrums and the whining…
Deep down you know that you don’t want your child to grow up with a false sense of entitlement.
You know that you don’t want them to have an expectation that things should just be handed to them without putting in any work.
You want them to know that they have to work in order to be able to earn the things that they want.
You want them to learn how to save, spend and share their money wisely.
You want them to grow up and have a sense of gratitude and appreciate all the things that they have access to.
You want them to grow up to be loving, caring, thoughtful young adults who have empathy towards others and towards those in need.
And this is why I decided to start teaching my kids about money from an early age.
From when they were about 2 and a half – 3years old, I started to introduce different coins to my kids.
I know – I’m crazy right!? You’re probably like “dude…at 3yrs old?!!”
But hey – I figured if I was already teaching them how to count, how to recognize colours and other stuff – why not start teaching them about money?
Worst case – they don’t understand and I’d wait till they were 4 or 5 to try again.
Best case – they actually start to learn it.
Which they actually did!
So I started making up fun games using coins.
I would teach them how to count and how to recognize the different coins.
As they got older…I would make up other fun games around the house, at the grocery store…book store…just about wherever there was money involved.
I’ve struggled with trying to figure out when I would have time to fit this stuff in.
I mean, let’s be real – as a parent, time is one thing that you definitely don’t have.
If you were the 5th character in the Wizard of Oz on your way to see the Wizard – you’d be the character that “Ain’t got no time”.
(the look they give when they meet the parent with no time)
And these days – kids have more activities than an Instagram model has likes – so how can you find the time to fit in teaching your kids about money?
At first, I didn’t know what was the best way to teach them about this stuff either because there’s sooo much info online about which ways are better.
Like, should I give them an allowance or pay them to do chores?
I read sooo many blogs, articles and books.
I watched soo many videos.
I became obsessed with this because I really wanted to know and understand how to do this.
I wanted to know how to teach my kids about money because I knew that I wanted them to grow up and avoid the same mistakes that I made with money.
I knew that I wanted them to grow up and avoid getting into credit card debt because I know the kinds of stress that it causes.
I knew that I wanted my kids to grow up and know the value of a dollar and understand that nothing comes for free. That you have to work to earn money to get the things that you want.
But let’s be honest. More than anything else…I just wanted the whining and constant nagging and asking for stuff to stop every frikken time we went to the store! Like for real tho!
Can I get an Amen! What parent doesn’t want this?
(My kids after I’ve told them NO about a million times already!)
I also knew that I wish I had learned about money growing up as a kid, so I wanted my kids to learn what I never learned.
After talking to so many friends of mine and realizing that we all wished we had learned about this stuff earlier….
…and after realizing that schools aren’t teaching our kids this real life stuff that they all need to know in order to avoid debt and making bad money decisions…
I figured that the only way my kids will learn this is if I teach it to them.
And then I was thinking – this is no different than anything else we teach our kids.
If we start early and do it often…it will become a habit.
It will become second nature and it will be something that they just do as they get older…like taking a bath or brushing their teeth.
Sure, they may miss a day here or there – but most of the time – they will do it more often than not.
And overall, they will make more good decisions with their money than bad ones. And to me…that’s a win!
That’s success!
So this is why I started.
If you’re a parent who also doesn’t want to raise a spoiled child, then join me on my parenting journey by signing up to the email list below!
I promise to keep it real with ya. I promise not to preach at ya.
I’ll keep it funny, entertaining and interesting (and heck….you might even learn a thing or too. Who knows?)
Because if you really wanted a lecture, you’d just go back to school or worst…move back in with your parents.
After you sign up, I’ll send you:
My guide that shows you the PROS and CONS of Giving an Allowance or Paying for Chores.
You will
- find out which method parents use most often
- finally figure out once and for all which system works best for the type of parent you are.
- learn about 2 other methods that are never mentioned but are way better than the traditional allowance/chores method we all know about. (Trust me! They’re really good yo!)
And…as an added bonus – I’ll throw in my list of Age Based Chores so that you can figure out which chores your child can do at each age.
All for FREE-99!!
Grab your docs here!