Handling money

[PersonalEnigma]

My difficult child has a bit of an issue with money. He really wants ways to make money, which is ok with me. The problem is that once he has some money he MUST imidiately spend it. It is like a compulsion. He has a bank account (we just started it) and whenever we go shopping he desperately wants to spend his money from the account. He truly believes that the only purpose for having money is to get rid of it. Recently he actually decided to toss $1 into a fountain at the mall. He had not been able to find something to spend it on, so he decided to toss it for a wish... He just couldn't stand having the money in his pocket any more. Anyone else have this problem? Any ideas?

 

[ML]

I had to chuckle. My difficult child who is close to your in age used to do something similar. Every time someone came over he would go up to his piggybank and bring down money to give as a gift. He loves giving. He's also very aware that money is power and he's tried to use it to gain influence in his circle of friends. He brings in things that he perceives are of value and gives them to his friends at school. Words spoken that you can't buy friends and true friends like you for who you are, not what you have, seem to fall on deaf ears.

I suppose this is a good lesson for your difficult child in learning delayed gratification. Something that is really hard for our kids. Heck a lot of grown-ups have troule with this too :smile: I think getting him a bank account was a great idea.

Good luck!

 

[tammyjh]

Maybe an envelope system? Take 3 envelopes and label then "Spend", "Save", and "Donate" and when he gets his $$, help him divide it up between the envelopes. You can put the "Save" and "Donate" up somewhere until you're ready to either take it to the bank with him or a place where he's going to donate it. Then he has the "Spend" to do whatever he wants with it, even if it is to throw it in the fountain. You could also just do two envelopes..."Spend" and "Save" to make it easier. I started this with my difficult child and she liked it. Its my fault that we haven't kept it up because allowance kind of fell by the wayside. I'll have to start back up again. I'm interested to see other ideas from everyone else on this one as well.
Good luck!!!

 

[Wiped Out]

Tammy-what a neat idea! I was going to say that my difficult child has the same problem, he only gets money to spend it. The concept of saving up for something he wants more is foreign to him. I may try Tammy's idea.

 

[susiestar]

We never could do allowance or let difficult child have any $. If he got allowance $ or gift $ he was totally obsessed with going somewhere to spend it. He became very aggressive if we would not let him buy what he wanted (safety reasons usually) or would not immediately go shopping.

I think he gets some weekly $$ from my parents now. I know he goes on long walks and usually has to buy something each time.

I never could figure out a way to deal with this. Good Luck!

Susie

 

[meowbunny]

Mine's 20 and still doesn't get the concept of saving. She once managed to save $500 towards getting a car. The second I quit policing her and her money, she took it out and positively threw it away. To this day, she has no clue what she spent it on.

Right now I am seriously worried because we have given each other a deadline of August 31st for her to move out. This was the agreement when we moved here -- 12 months and then you need to find your own way with just a little help from mom. So far, she has saved nada, zilch, nothing, zip. And I won't be contributing more than she does to her journey. I may match it, but that's it.

I think for some, it just isn't in their realm of thinking. How we ever get it through to them, I have no idea. Mine is good about buying things on sale and the like, but she has to spend every penny -- not just the cash on her, but the credit limit on her credit card (which she no longer has, thank goodness) and whatever balance is available to her on her debit card. So very scary.

 

[PersonalEnigma]

Right now difficult child doesn't have an allowance, but I hope to restart something. He has some chores that he is required to do each day no matter what (feeding the dog for example). We had a pet lizard and I paid him $5 a week for his "job" of caring for the lizard. Sadly the lizard died (no fault of difficult child) so that fell by the wayside. I am thinking of making up a paid chores list for him so he canchoose what chores to do and earn money accordingly. I want him to equate getting money to having a job of some sort and plan to help him get a "real" job as soon as he is old enough.

For saving, I am thinking of setting up a chart like those fund-raising thermometers where difficult child can choose an item to save for, then keep track of how close to that goal he is getting. I don't know how well it will work though...

Another thing I hope difficult child will learn from having to work hard to get something he wants is to value and take care of that thing. He is SO hard on his things and never keeps track of them. Right now he has been banned from video games until he finds two cases which he has managed to loose (leaving the disks lying around where they can get wrecked). We cleaned up the living room today, searching under the couches for the cases. No luck sadly - I would have loved to be able to reward him with some game time. At least we foundd some of his other things that he'd been missing for quite some time.

 

[meowbunny]

Good luck! It works for some, not for others. Nothing worked for mine -- neither in the concept of money can be saved nor in valuing what she buys herself.