by L. A. Brown

Created on: April 20, 2009   Last Updated: May 30, 2009

My son was six years old when I was first made aware that he had no concept of the worth of money. Having just celebrated his birthday, several family members had given him cards with money in it as gifts. Since he had accumulated a total of $55, I promised him that I would take him shopping the following weekend so he could buy himself a present. He begged me to let him keep the money in the room and assured me that he was a "big" boy. I finally agreed and put the money in the battered Pringles can that he used for to store his change. I remember telling him numerous times to leave the money in there until we could go to the toy store and he promised that he would. I should have known better.

A few days later, after tucking him in to bed, I took a peek in the can. To my dismay, it was empty except for some change. After some grueling questioning, he finally admitted to taking the money to his babysitter's house because he wanted to show his friends. He believed that it had fallen out of his pocket. To this day, more than 4 years later, I never discovered the truth of what became of his money, but I knew immediately that he wasn't at all concerned that he lost the money but more terrified that I would be angry with him. Of course I was, but more importantly, I was concerned of his lack of awareness to the value of money. Once the sick feeling of financial loss finally left my stomach, I sat down to come up with a plan.

I decided to start giving him an allowance. He would have to do certain chores to earn his money; I figured I could spare $5.00 a week. When I told him about my plan in the morning, he was initially very excited at the idea until I told him the catch. He was not allowed to spend any of the money he earned until he paid himself back the money he had lost. At $5 a week, it took him 11 weeks to accumulate enough money. "Wow," he said to me when I showed him the pile of 5s, which I had kept securely in MY room this time. "That took a long time!"

I reminded him of how easily he had acquired that same amount of money the first time and how quickly it disappeared. He seemed less willing to part with the money this time, since he had actually earned it so I suggested that we start a bank account for him where he could earn some interest on the money he saved. Since he was under 12, we had to open a joint account in my name as well as his so I linked it to my already existing account.

He continued to do chores in exchange for his allowance and he

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