Everybody Loves Your Money

My wife and daughter went for a walk this morning and were gone about 20 minutes when the phone rang.  My wife had taken her cel phone and was out on her walk.  She asked me to drive over to where they were to check out a garage sale.  I’ll confess that I normally HATE garage sales.  My stubborn point of view is that we have enough crap in our house that we don’t need to go buy someone else’s crap to compliment ours.

Well, I stand corrected.  As you may know, we subscribe to a fairly frugal method of buying clothes for our daughter.  She’s only 3 years old and really doesn’t care what she wears.  We know that in a few years, she’s going to care a lot more so we try to save on her clothing costs now.  We got a lot of hand-me-downs for the first couple of years but those have all dried up.  Needless to say, we aren’t ashamed to pick up some used clothing now and then.

So, I hopped in my truck and headed over to the garage sale.  When I got there I saw the typical crap sitting all over the driveway and also saw three large sheets with TONS of little girl clothes on them.  My wife had already started picking things out and by the time we both got done looking we had 22 items.  All of them were in like new condition and most of them were either from “Baby Gap”, “Gymboree”, “The Children’s Place” and “Carter”.  All of these brands are quite popular and are good quality.  It was apparent that these people had spent a fortune on clothes for their child.  Anyway, I picked up the pile and walked up to the MAN (always pick the man in a situation like this) and said, “How much do you want for this pile”.  I had also made a comment a few minutes prior that I knew he heard.  I told my wife, “Easy.  You are going to bankrupt us”.  She laughed and knew I was kidding, but he didn’t necessarily know that.  So, when I asked him how much, he thought about it for a second and said, “How about $5?”.  I didn’t even bother to barter with him.  I was hoping to negotiate down to $10 since that’s all I had in my wallet at the time.  He got us a bag, we put all the clothes in and we left.  We got our daughter a TON of clothes and it set us back $5.  Suddenly I’m not as opinionated about garage sales.

I suppose it was inevitable.  My daughter has reached that precious milestone of wanting everything she sees in the store and she believes with the right approach, she’ll get it.  I guess it’s been slowly evolving, but I really noticed it last time we went to the store.  She’s almost 3 years old and firmly has a grasp on the idea that getting more “things” is an enjoyable experience.  We’ve tried not to go overboard with her and in fact have probably bought her a TON less than lots of other parents.  I’m convinced that isn’t enough though.  She is bombarded with marketing everywhere she turns.  She could say “McDonalds” when she was 1 year old.  We had only been there a couple times, but it was firmly entrenched in her brain.

So, the latest episode was at the store a couple days ago.  Like most stores, the local department store strategically places kids items nice and low to the ground where any size squirt can see them.  In this case it was books.  There was a bright pink princess book on the rack and my daughter saw it.  We had to listen to her talk about wanting that princess book all through the store.  We didn’t budge.  We had made up our mind that she wasn’t going to get anything on this trip to the store.  It wasn’t about the money.  Heck, it wasn’t even very expensive.  It was simply principle.  We don’t want our daughter to expect something every time we go shopping.  Sometimes shopping is just to get the essentials.  What we did do is offer her the chance to “earn” it.  If she filled up her “potty chart” (in other words, go potty on the toilet a bunch of times) she could get the princess book with half of the money in the piggy bank.  She could only use half because we are teaching her that she has to save half of all the money she receives.

I may have mentioned it before, but I grew up next door to a kid who was my age.  Every time his mother would get in her car, he would sprint for the driveway yelling, “Mom, get me a toy!!!!!”.  Without fail, and I really mean WITHOUT FAIL, she would come back with something for him.  If she was going to get her hair cut, she would take a detour to the store and find something to buy him.  This kid had EVERY toy that came out.  He had no appreciation for money.  By the time he was in the 10th grade he had dropped out of school.  His mother had done so much of his homework over the years that by the time he hit the 10th grade he didn’t know how to do any of it, and she wasn’t smart enough to do 10th grade level work.  Anyway, I don’t want my daughter to end up not appreciating the value of money and end up like him.  (Yeah, it’s an extreme example and I obviously don’t think my daughter will end up that way)  I still remember when he was about 19.  He had gotten a brand new truck that his mom had co-signed for him.  It was only about 9 months later that it got repossessed.  I lost touch with him years ago so I really don’t know how he is fairing now.  I’m guessing he’s probably struggling.