Kids and Money

Our elder daughter turned seven in the month of Feb 09. Both of us were very exited about this chronological milestone in her life. She was exited because she is only 3 years away from getting a puppy ( we have promised her she can get a puppy once she turns 10).

One of the traits that I have been observing in her for last few years was her tendency to go to a junk food stall the moment we reached a mall. Actually from home itself she will inform us that she wants to have a burger at McDonald's or a Pizza and Garlic bread at Pizza hut. She will not accept a any other food brand. Now all these stuff besides not being very healthy is also expensive to buy.

Now as she has learned additions and subtraction at school I decided to give her pocket money -a princely sum of Rs 500 every month. She gets this money on the first Saturday of every month ( This is the fist time in a month we would be going out shopping for that month)
Now given below are the rules for the same:

1. She gets 5 one hundred rupee notes.
2. She can spend money only on weekends for buying stuff like junk food ( I know it is not healthy but she is only 7, how can i stop her if I myself enjoy it?). She can use the money to buy stuff from the store in the compound.
3. Her mother is the custodian of the money.
4. She is not allowed to take any money to the school ( she is in class 2 in DPS )
5. She needs to maintain a small diary in which her mom keeps a record for all the money she has spent.
6. She has to save Rs 50 minimum every month of this 500/- if she is able to save Rs 50 every month then I add another 50 to the same and Rs 100 is deposited in her savings bank account with the bank. ( she is familiar with the concept of bank, although she feels I am pretty close to one :) )
7. Overdrafts are not allowed.

I understand that these are very stringent conditions and 500/ Rs per month is not a big amount for a 7 year old in todays world when a pizza cost upward of 250. But the idea is that she understands the concept of money, budget and responsibility. My wife thinks that I am going too far but it has become a game between papa and The Princess.

She also has some money that our relatives have given to her so she is very exited about all this and counts her money every once a while in the week just to be sure the money is there.

I really like it when she now checks the price of a item before she demands it. Will keep you posted on the developments.

A Weekend Without Expenses

Our typical weekend goes like this:

1. Saturday: Get up around 1 eat breakfast laze a bit. Play with kids and then once it is around 4 pm we go to one of the numerous malls in Gurgaon. We have quiet a few of them in Gurgaon. A few from DLF--City Center, Mega mall, Grand mall, some from MGF-Metroplolitian, Megacity, then Ambiance from one of the most powerful political family in Haryana ( last heard one of there sons was fighting with his mistress turned wife turned ex wife on news channels).
Now our first stop typically is a so called discount store like Big Bazaar of Spencers or Reliance, we go their without a list and start buying things that we fancy. My elder daughter is an avid shopper and shops on her own for Jams, Chocalates, Cookies, Potato Chips, Nachos and other junk items. My wife will buy clothes for the 2 girls and i typically pick up all kind of health foods, T shirts to excercise because at the pace i am growing in size the last purchase have become smaller. Besides we will buy the staples like lentils, atta, rice etc. Our typical bill for a visit to the discount store would be 6-7K per visit.

Next we will watch a movie any movie that we can get tickets for this is another about 1000 Rs including snacks . After the movie we got to have dinner and this will burn another 1000 Rs. Same routine is repeated on Sunday but typically on Sunday we have lunch outside of home instead of dinner as the kid has to go to school next day.

But this weekend was different. This saturday we decided to not go anywhere and we stayed at home. After lunch I decided to pay a visit to my wife's parents who live in Delhi. I cannot tell you how happy my mom in law was to see us. She was more than happy to make dinner for me and also invited my sister in law who lives close buy for dinner. Sis in law came with her 2 kids who are elder to our and later her husband also joined us. It became a nice family get together and we talked about the good old days ( not that they were very long ago :) )

Sunday we decided to not go anywhere. Misses checked the stock in the pantry and declared we are not going to starve if we do not do grocery shopping for next 5 weeks. In our josh to save on various deals avaialble at the discount stores we have been buying stuff that we will not be able to consume for quiet some time this has resulted in overstocking of our pantry with items that can be used for more than a month.

So we decided not to go out on Sunday also and I cooked some Pasta for my daughter. For some strange reason my daugther likes the pasta cooked by me :) She thinks i am a better cook than my wife and I agree with her. Only person to disagree is the misses, but she is outnumbered with the dad and daughter ganging against her.
Any ways the net result of not going out this one weekend was saving of close to 9000 Rs give or take a few.

As for our weekly dose of movies once the kids have gone to bed we watched MB's Fashion on DVD!.

I think we learned a very important lesson this weekend that if you really do not have a reason to go out and shop there is no need to go out. One can enjoy and have a much better weekend by spending time with family and actually end up saving quiet a bit.

So my friend next time you have an urge to go out and spend some money do ask yourself can you not enjoy at home which is a much better way of spending time with your family while saving some money.