What My Son Taught Me About Our Money System
May 29, 2008 by Miranda Marquit
Filed under Finance
We can learn a lot from kids. And this is the theme this month on the B5 Media Business Channel. I thought it worth mentioning that my son really taught me something about how silly our money system can be.
Last month, I wrote about how we went to the Coinstar and my son was very disappointed to watch all of his coins (hundreds of them) disappear. Then he got a piece of paper. Then we exchanged that piece of paper for paper bills. My son was heartbroken.
I tried to explain that paper is more valuable than coins. It didn’t make sense to him. And I thought about our money system — we have a lot of paper that isn’t backed by anything substantial — and realized that my five year old son has a better grasp of the situation than most grownups.
There’s a good opportunity for you to show him why we’ve gone to paper. Ask him, if he wants to buy an ice cream, and there’s a line at the counter, would he rather pull out a handful of coins and count them, or just some paper money? How would the cashier feel about it, and how long it would take if everyone in the line used coins, too?
You can reinforce this by doing it in an ice cream store, then handing him bills so he can buy one himself :)
I like this idea. We’ll give it a go. I could sure use some ice cream anyway :)
I like markzero’s idea… I’ve been having troubles explaining the concept of credit cards to my 6 and 8 years old.
My son sort of “gets” credit and debit cards. Mainly because we use our debit card so much. When he was two, he thought money WAS the debit card. But he is still baffled at the connection between what we put in the bank, and how it comes out on the debit card. It all really is kind of confusing.