new hotness

This post is brought to you from my new shiny laptop!  I woke it up from hibernating,  downloaded firefox,  rebooted, bookmarked a few of my favorite websites, and opened a new post in my blog in a total of 10 minutes.  I would still be waiting for the old laptop to wake up!

I am slowly introducing the concept of money to Baby Girl.   She has a small piggy bank that she puts her coins in, and I've told her that when she fills it up we can empty it and use the money inside to buy a new toy.   I'm sure I'll have to contribute to this toy with my own money since a small piggy bank filled with coins should yield about 37 cents.   So we've started the concept of saving money and the idea that things at the store are not free, you actually have to pay for them.   I understand that these ideas are well beyond what her mind can grasp right now,  but I am determined to raise my children to understand money and not be the kids that incur $20K of credit card debt as soon as they can control their own finances.   I will totally be that mother who makes her kid put half of her $28 paycheck in the bank (yes, my mother always made me put half my paychecks in the bank,  even when I made $7.50/hour for 2 hours a week teaching figure skating). 

Yesterday Baby Girl saw this on the cover of the One Step Ahead flier:

It's their Typhoon Twist, which is an inflatable pool with a water slide that you reach by the climbing up the rock wall.   What is not to love about this item??  Oh, right the $500 price tag.   Not to mention we have no where to put it,  but I'd be lobbying my father to keep it down the cape if it wasn't $500.   Baby Girl really wants this pool.  I explained to her we can't get it because it's too expensive.  We had a 10 minute conversation about the fact that $500 is too much money to spend on an inflatable pool,  even one as cool as the Typhoon Twist.   I don't think she understands what it means that it's too expensive,  but now she knows we aren't buying it because it's too much money.

I can't imagine that all conversations like this will go as smoothly as this one,  but at least we've started.   If I can get her through college without credit card debt,  without blowing through any savings she will accumulate, and embrace the idea of paying herself first  I will consider it a victory.   That gives me 18 more years to hammer these lessons home!