The Opposite of Spoiled

by Ron Lieber

  Her logic is powerful. If you can’t shake the feeling that children should have to do something in exchange for an allowance, there is a middle ground you might pursue. As a child, Seattle copywriter Jake Johnson’s parents paid him to do chores. But when his 7-year-old son, Liam, started clamoring for a fourth football and the latest Beyblades and a regular allowance to pay for it all, Johnson stopped to consider what his own allowance experience had taught him. Upon reflection, he decided that he had learned two things: that he needed to rush to finish his everyday tasks so he could get paid and that working for money was no fun at all.

  What Johnson wanted for Liam, he wrote in an online essay that quickly went viral, was something different. He and his wife hope that their son will learn to think entrepreneurially and grow up to be someone who sells his ability to come up with creative ideas, not just his competence in performing tasks. They want him to know that there can be joy in a job well done. So while Liam earns no money for basic chores, he does get paid for recognizing problems and solving them. When he spotted all the fallen leaves in the backyard, he offered to rake them and negotiated a price. His grandparents’ dirty car inspired him to wash it to make some money. Later he wanted to wash other people’s vehicles on a regular basis, and Jake helped him write a simple business plan. “I see passion building in him as he looks at making money as a project that involves solving problems rather than as selling his time to hurry through tasks,” Jake wrote in his essay. “Every kid loves a good project, and so do I. I see him slowly turning into an entrepreneurial thinker. And no matter what he does in life, that type of thinking will help him excel.”

  4

  The Smartest Ways for Kids to Spend

  The hours-of-fun-per-dollar test, Grandma Dana’s shopping ritual, and the importance of record-store pit stops

  Back in high school, Annie Leonard was the kid without the Vuarnet sunglasses. One of three siblings, Leonard was raised by a single mother, a nurse; her mom had the wherewithal to get her into good private schools but not much spare money beyond that. Cars arrived at her high school on her classmates’ 16th birthdays wrapped in pink ribbons, only to have grown-ups drive them away because students weren’t supposed to have cars at school.

  Leonard grew up to be an activist, traveling the globe for Greenpeace. Along the way, she made a short film about pollution and garbage called The Story of Stuff in hopes of teaching people about the consequences of buying and discarding more things than we truly need. It struck a nerve, a big one, and the video has now been viewed online at least 25 million times. The film became a book and evolved into a nonprofit organization. Stephen Colbert had her on his show and referred to her film as a “craze.”

  Children eventually joined the audience. Teachers began showing the film to classrooms full of students. Requests poured in for some sort of curriculum or lesson plan. A story about the film’s popularity among educators appeared on the front page of The New York Times, complete with tales of children who were having second thoughts about their Lego purchases. All the attention among the juvenile set was surprising to Leonard, since it had never been the point of the exercise. “I didn’t make The Story of Stuff for kids,” she explained. I was surprised when she told me this, for she is a mother herself. But she eventually came to understand that one of the reasons she was able to explain the cycle of stuff so well is that she’d spent so many years trying to explain her work to her now teenage daughter, Dewi.

  So how does a mother who takes a bold public stand against mindless buying go about raising a child in this day and age? Well, Leonard is no eco-scold in real life, and her parenting is a lot like mine or yours. She owns a car, and she and her neighbors share a trampoline and swimming pool, both firmly in the Wants category. Nor is she cheap. Dewi goes skiing and spends a fair bit of time at a local rock-climbing gym. And mother and daughter negotiate over skinny jeans and standards of appropriate attire the same way most of us do with our own kids.

  We all have our own stories behind our collections of stuff and the feelings those possessions generate—pride of ownership in something we saved for long and hard, gratitude for an heirloom or a constant stream of hand-me-downs, bewilderment at the enormous assortment of outgrown sports gear that piles up, regret about things we barely use but cost enough to make us feel bad about putting them out on the curb. Given the sheer abundance of our modern lives, it’s not surprising that we end up with so many complicated feelings and concerns about stuff. Never before has so much been available for so little with such ease, whether it’s the fast fashion at H&M or the fast food at the chains that so many kids love. On the one hand, this is frightening. All of us remember the economic collapse in 2008, where many people spent and borrowed beyond their means. We want to train our kids somehow to resist such urges and protect them from the consequences of succumbing to them.

  On the other hand, there is real joy in spending money on objects and experiences that bring lasting happiness and enduring memories. This pleasure is not something to be ashamed of or to chide our children for. In fact, we ought to celebrate it. The first time I watched my daughter buy something with her own money, she was shopping for jewelry at an outdoor festival and stalked the displays under the tent with such determination and pride, clenching the bills in her little fist. It was a real moment for her, and I’m sure there will be more of them as she saves up for bigger things. We shouldn’t rob our kids of these pleasures.

  What they need is a sense of balance and just the right amount of thrift. Thrift is an odd word, often synonymous with cheap. If it’s ever a compliment, it’s a begrudging one. What’s been lost over the years, however, is the recognition that the root word of thrift is thrive. Our goal as parents isn’t to promote the stingy type of thrift or the resolute version that previous generations of Americans generally turned to only when the economy or war shortages demanded it. Instead, we’re aiming to do three things: set some spending guidelines to lean on; model a few sensible tactics for our children; and adopt family rituals that make spending fun—but only on things that have real value and meaning. With this foundation, we’ll give our kids the best shot at thriving no matter how much money they end up having or what is going on with the economy.

  The Fun Ratio and the More-Good/Less-Harm Rule

  Start with one great calculation that kids can do as soon as they learn simple division. It comes from Mary Matthiesen, a scientist by training, who first posted about it in my Facebook community. Most kids go through an extended “I want, I want” stage. It’s tiresome in and of itself, but it can be especially disappointing if you lack the proper comeback. “We can’t afford it” isn’t always true, and “because I said so” isn’t particularly satisfying to anyone. Saying yes to preserve the peace doesn’t feel so good either, given that kids often end up with toys or souvenirs that they don’t play with much once they are cluttering up the house.

  But Matthiesen hit on the concept of return on investment, though she didn’t call it that. Instead, she asked her kids to estimate the hours of fun per dollar that any particular Want of theirs might provide. The idea came to her around Christmas. Her son’s most expensive toys, a Talking Tigger and a Tekno Pup, grabbed his attention but didn’t hold it for very long. Meanwhile, the cheapest toys, a Fisher-Price cash register and a Blue’s Clues playhouse, entertained both kids for hours. The house eventually fell to pieces, while the cash register lasted for years. She did the math for me and crowned the cash register champion at 185.5 hours of fun per dollar, while Talking Tigger yielded just 0.08 hour of fun per dollar. The best deal, the kids realized years later, was a deck of cards. It lasts a lifetime as long as you don’t lose any of them, and it doesn’t cost more than $2 or so. She knew her daughter had gotten the concept when she walked through a toy store one day, hit Press Me on a talking doll, and quipped, “Well, I just got my five minutes of fun for free.”

  The kids are now 20 and 17 and the family lives in Lakewood, Ohio. Jimmy, the older one
, eventually used the ratio to convince his parents to pay for some video games. Thousands of hours of fun for $60 is worth the expense, the logic went. He listens to music on Spotify now instead of buying it and tolerates the commercials on the free version. Most of the movies he sees he streams on Netflix; two hours of fun per dollar for 10 movies a month at $10 a month for the service. Sarah, the 17-year-old, reads a lot of library books and buys few books at the store. The library card costs nothing at all, whereas a $10 book might provide just 0.5 hours of fun per dollar for a fast reader who finishes it in five hours.

  The Fun Ratio works particularly well for things we don’t buy every day—the Wants more than the Needs. Those purchases tend to be the first ones that children are interested in making anyway, like toys. Later on, the whole family can do the math on experiences that the grown-ups may or may not be willing to pay for. The Fun Ratio helps, for instance, when setting budgets for vacations, which is a discussion that teenagers can participate in. It’s useful when an event has already happened, too. Did everyone agree that the more expensive tickets to a concert or other event were worth it? What other fun might everyone have had with the savings from sitting in the cheaper seats?

  When it comes to more everyday Needs, though—things like food or clothing—the Fun Ratio doesn’t help quite as much. For those instances, I like the test that Zoe Weil came up with as part of her work as president of the Institute for Humane Education. In an effort to explain to students how she made her own consumer decisions, she told them that she asked herself a single question: Which one does the most good and the least harm?

  The More-Good/Less-Harm Rule is not a new test. It’s just an extension of the Golden Rule, a version of which turns up in the good and holy books of nearly every world religion. It’s also highly flexible. More good and least harm for whom? You? Your neighbors? Your nation? The environment? Animals? The implicit but essential message here is that every dollar we spend is an endorsement of something. Which is not to say that we need to remind our children of this every time we buy something. That would be exhausting—and not just for the kids. Also, Weil freely acknowledges that we don’t always have enough information to figure out what actually will help more and harm less.

  Sometimes, however, there is plenty of information. Take the Abercrombie & Fitch chain of clothing stores for instance. It not only fired a teenage employee for wearing an Islamic headscarf, it went to federal court to defend its right to do so. It has sold shirts with sayings across the chest that read “Who Needs a Brain When You Have These?” and “Gentlemen Prefer Tig Ol’ Bitties” and “Do I Make You Look Fat?” Over the years, its chief executive has defended its thong underwear for girls that had “Eye Candy” and “Wink Wink” printed on the front and proclaimed that “a lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” Many teens will find out about company behavior like this on their own and decide for themselves whether to patronize it. But parents can certainly direct kids’ attention to questionable behavior in the service of asking what sort of harm they might cause by spending their dollars at a company that seems to be up to no good.

  The same logic applies when making choices about where to spend money in the community. For children who play in the local Little League, ask them to think about which businesses gave money to sponsor the teams. Or maybe there were others that helped with the annual PTA auction. Perhaps you have a friend or neighbor who is a local merchant. Parents can go out of their way to spend money at these businesses and encourage kids to do the same with their allowance money.

  Spending money at a local farmers market is another way to support people who live nearby. It seems obvious to grown-ups, but children have no way of knowing what spending money there accomplishes unless we explain it and remind them once in a while.

  The Value of Coupons, Prepaid Debit Cards, and Thrift-Store Shopping

  Once we’ve established some guidelines for spending, it’s a good idea to introduce some tools to help kids spend their money more wisely and some new places where they can get more for every dollar.

  Plenty of good comes from using coupons, and nobody is harmed in their use. So introducing kids to this practice as a way to get them to think about spending money wisely makes sense. Some veteran couponers bring their kids in on the weekly grocery store battle plan and turn it into a game with actual cash prizes that reflect the family’s savings.

  Each week, starting when she was about 7 years old, Katie Belpedio Schreiber, her mother, and her younger brother would sit down at the kitchen table with the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio, and clip. The coupons went in an accordion file that the trio would take to the local Kroger or Big Bear, depending on which had the best in-store deals that week. The children waited by the register for the receipt to announce the total savings, and their mother would hand it over on the spot, in cash. Each child usually got around $6 on a $100 grocery bill. Belpedio Schreiber no longer has to watch her pennies quite as carefully as her parents once did, but she still eagerly rips open the coupon mailers that come to her house.

  Another tactic that encourages thrift, cuts down on endless nagging, and gives kids some sense of autonomy is the use of prepaid debit cards. These work particularly well during trips or in situations where parents are paying but want the kids to stick to a budget. Lori Embrey, a financial planner in Columbus, Ohio, wanted a ready answer for the chorus of “can I get this?” she feared she would hear on an endless loop when her family went to Disney World for a week. So each kid got a $100 prepaid card that they could use for anything beyond basic food and drinks, which were on Mom and Dad. She even devoted one piece of luggage to snacks and Ziploc bags, so they could choose to tote those around rather than paying $5 for Dippin’ Dots and the like. The combination of a strictly finite resource and the control built into having a card of one’s own practically forces a child to think about value and trade-offs. Still, it puts the kids in control, which makes them feel powerful. Even Embrey’s 5-year-old son totally got it; he thought hard about his purchases and didn’t pick his souvenirs until the last day of the trip. He also had enough left over for ice cream.

  Cards that we designate for a specific purpose can be useful budgeting tools even when we’re not on vacation or at an amusement park for the day. For instance, we can set up children who love games with a card loaded with a limited amount of allowance money for in-app purchases alone. Parents who want to pay for their kids to go off campus for lunch once a week during the school year can automatically transfer a set dollar amount to a card every month. In exchange for the privilege of going out, the child has to keep track of the card and its balance.

  One great retail venue for instilling values about spending and saving is thrift shops. They’re easy to find in most towns of any size, and kids often see going to them as the treasure hunts they often are. Aimee Sims has been shopping with her family at thrift shops for years. Her husband is in the military, so he’s in uniform during the workday and doesn’t need a large wardrobe. When he was deployed in conflict zones overseas, he earned hazard pay, as did many of his fellow soldiers whose families lived on base back in the United States. Aimee saw their spouses spending this extra money on boats and other luxuries, but she decided to use it to pay off the family’s vehicle loans and funnel the rest toward chasing $5 cashmere sweaters in second-hand stores. The family lives in northern Virginia now, and Aimee’s daughter has grown to see the advantages of shopping at thrift stores. “The fashion now is skinny jeans with a hoodie sweatshirt and some kind of funny T-shirt,” Aimee said, describing the teenagers she sees parading around. Her daughter has realized that not only are the funny T-shirts often just $1 in thrift shops, but nobody else will ever have the same one. She loves the pursuit and takes pride in her ability to outsmart the commercial marketplace.

  Family Rituals: Dollar-Store Dana, Record-Store Pit Stops, and the Teachings of Lent

  One of my favorite ways to set fam
ily values into place is to build rituals around certain kinds of spending. While parents should take the lead, there’s a grandmother in Chicago who started a family tradition worthy of copying, particularly for parents of smaller children. Every year on the birthdays of her three grandchildren, Dana Treister handed each of them a dollar for every year they’d been alive. Then, she took them to a dollar store so they could pick out gifts for themselves. With a small pile of dollars, everything in a true, old-fashioned dollar store is, by definition, affordable. So figuring out what to buy becomes a great way to test how well your children are absorbing the lessons you’re trying to teach.

  Grandma Dana started her dollar-store trips when each of her grandchildren turned 4. One key, she explained, was never having a time limit so the kids could carefully weigh their choices. Some dollar-store trips would take 90 minutes. One of her grandchildren would walk the aisles methodically, another would grab everything interesting and then put things back at the end. The third grandchild, on one of her first birthday visits, picked out a dog Frisbee. Grandma Dana had to probe her a bit on this, given that the intended recipient was an old and lethargic pug. Would Harley really run after the spinning disk? Was the dog’s mouth big enough to catch a Frisbee in the first place? They soon determined that the dog would get many more hours of fun out of a stuffed pink bone. This tradition went on for nearly a decade, until the older kids grew out of the selection of toys but hadn’t yet learned to appreciate the bargains on cleaning products.

  My colleague Dwight Garner and his wife, Cree LeFavour, adopted a family buying ritual years ago with their two children. Whenever they see an independent record store, they stop and buy something. “Record stores tend to be great places,” Garner explained. “Cluttered and alive and pretty weird. Good places for kids to see. Walking around record stores with them helps teach the lesson that selling their music is how musicians make a living. It’s not OK to rip your music from illegal sites.”