There is a child’s birthday coming up and I was originally just going to give them money to get whatever they want. I was thinking $30 to $50 should be okay. But just to make sure, I asked him if there was anything specific that he wanted. He expressed how he wanted a gift card for a game called Roblox which I have heard of but never played myself. He actually went up to the gift card area and showed me the $25 gift card that he wanted. Because it was just credit, I asked him as a test if he would still rather have the money as it was more and he could technically buy the card and then some with it. However, he was just so focused on getting credit for the game where he still insisted that he wanted the card.
This reminded me of the examples where one asks a child if they would rather have say $1000 or a box of candy and the child ends up choosing the candy that only costs a few dollars. That’s something you would expect a child to do. But at the same time it shows how there are a lot of missed opportunities at a child’s young age to teach them financial literacy with these types of examples. Even I learned early on by just seeing my parents go shopping while seeing them debate if an item was worth it or not. Usually in the form of expressing how something was or wasn’t on sale.
I wasn’t being forced taught anything either which should mean just giving your child exposure on how to save an spend money can go a long way for them to be able to manage it efficiently too. At the same time, not choosing say the cheap candy over the other choice that is worth way more.