Fun Money – A Great Way to Get Rid of That Entitlement Mentality!

I was walking through the grocery store the other day when I saw a little boy tugging on his father’s pant leg and overheard him saying, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, look! I want that Daddy. Can I please? Please? Please Daddy, can I have that, please? It’s so cool Daddy!”

The little boy in the store had been pointing out a cool new toy that he was literally drooling over. His father had turned to him hurriedly and said, “No son, not this time.” He took his little hand in his and I watched as the little boy’s head dropped in disappointment and sad acceptance.

My own daughter Xanthe had also noticed his sad little face and turned to me and said, “Mommy, it’s too bad that little boy didn’t have his ‘Fun’ money with him.”

A few years ago I had set up a new money management system for my kiddos that I called “The 6 Magical Piggy Banks”. Each piggy bank had a specific theme for saving.

Grow – was their piggy bank for saving money for reinvesting into ventures that would make them more money; like saving up money to invest in their own lemonade stand business.

Give – was their piggy bank for saving money that they would give away to help others through charity; like the local animal shelter.

Rain – was their piggy bank for saving for that ‘rainy day’ when their world turned up-side-down; like if they needed to replace tights for a dance competition last minute.

Learn – was their piggy bank for saving money for further learning; like learning a new skill or saving for college

Goal – was their piggy bank for saving money for a specific long-term goal; like saving up for a new bicycle.

Fun – was their piggy bank for saving money that they could use whenever they liked for whatever they liked, within reason of course!

Xanthe and Quinn were always encouraged to earn their own money and then to sort their earnings into their 6 magical piggy banks. So when Xanthe saw that the little girl in the store wasn’t allowed to get the pretty hair elastics, instead of feeling bad for her because the little girl’s father had said, ‘no’, she was thinking about a solution. If the little girl had been saving her money into her own 6 magical piggy banks, then she could have taken her ‘Fun’ money to the store with her and bought the elastics with her own money.

You may be thinking to yourself, “sure it’s great for my child to save their money into different piggy banks but where does that money come from?” That’s a fair enough question for sure. I’ve always liked to encourage my kiddos to earn their own money; to use their imaginations to come up with fun and creative ways to make their own money.

A few summers ago, we were having a street sale and my children really wanted to buy some toys they had seen on a neighbor’s lawn, and asked if they could put the toys on hold until they earned some money to pay for them. My son was running his own lemonade stand on our yard and my daughter, wanting to do something a little more creative, was running a face-painting stand.

The weather was very hot and sunny so Quinn’s lemonade business was running at full tilt. Xanthe’s face-painting business on the other hand was not doing so well. Sure she had the occasional child’s face to paint while their parents perused our yard sale but she was getting almost no adult faces to paint and therefore wasn’t earning much money. Her prospect of being able to pay for the toy she wanted was looking slim.

When she came over to me to complain that Quinn was making money but she was not, I encouraged her to look at the situation around her and see if she could come up with a creative solution. She noticed that one of the ladies going through the yard sale had a beautiful butterfly tattooed on her shoulder. It was very hot out and almost all of the adults stopping by had on either short-sleeve or no sleeve shirts, so my daughter decided to start offering to do arm tattoos with her face paints.

Her new venture was a huge success. A good majority of the adults were very happy to have Xanthe paint little butterflies, flowers and ladybugs on their arms and at the end of the day she ended up earning even more money than Quinn did!

After dividing their earnings up into their respective 6 magical piggy banks they each took their ‘Fun’ money and headed over to a neighboring yard sale and rewarded themselves for their hard efforts by buying those toys they had asked the neighbor to put on hold for them.

Over the years since then, both Xanthe and Quinn have come up with a number of fun and creative ways to earn their own money. They always divvy up their earnings into their 6 magical piggy banks and enjoy spending their ‘Fun’ money whenever the opportunity arises.

It was a very proud moment for me when Xanthe looked at the situation in the grocery store and her mind went immediately to a possible solution for how that little boy could get the toy he wanted rather than the usual entitlement mentality that most children nowadays would have.

Cheers…Amanda van der Gulik…Excited Life Enthusiast! ;o)

P. S. Did you find this article helpful? If so, then please help me empower more kids, teens and their families by leaving me your own comments below and clicking the ‘like’ button and ‘sharing’ it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Thank-you for helping me empower more Healthy Wealth Mentality kiddos. We need them! 😀

“Together we can raise kids and teens who are money savvy and get to follow their dreams because they know how to handle and value their money…and not come back crawling home to mom and dad to get them out of financial trouble!”