My capitalist daughter

May 8, 2009 in Family

So recently we’ve changed up our family budget to be more inline with Dave Ramsey’s outlined budget in Financial Peace University. With that change has come some expected pain and discomfort. It’s also brought some unexpected learning experiences (and joy).

You see, we’ve added “blow money” to our monthly budget for each person in our family – it’s not much, but it’s more than we budgeted before (which was $0). Our daughters (of course) love the idea — and my youngest has liked the idea so much that she has blown through her blow money for the month inside of a week.

I thought this was going to turn into one of those moments where I was going to teach her that if she was more careful with her money, she might still have more to spend.

I was wrong.

My daughter decided she didn’t like being broke. She also decided she had certain skills in making chocolate lolipops that her friends at school might be willing to pay for. So she explained her idea to her mom on the way home from school and got to work on them when she got home. Later that evening she explained her plan to me, and I told her I was proud of her. I also told her I’d be impressed when she had cash in hand (thinking that it was cool that her mind was clearly working like a little capitalist, but also thinking that she may not go through with the actual selling bit).

The next afternoon she proudly announced she made $3 selling chocolate lolipops to her friends.

I guess in the end, I’m the one that got schooled by my capitalist daughter: she taught me that no matter how dire my financial situation might seem, worry doesn’t help but creativity and action does.