My son just turned 10. He received some good, solid gifts from a variety of folks. He also received a few money gifts, in the range of $10 to $20. That makes sense to me. What I don’t understand is why one of his gifts was $75.<\/p>\n
Does a 10-year-old really need a $75 money gift? It’s one thing to stick $75 into the 529 plan<\/a> we have set up for him, and quite another to stick that cash into a card. One of the reasons that I had an issue (although respecting the generosity behind the gesture) was that my son’s thoughts immediately zoomed into riches untold, rhapsodizing about useless and expensive gadgets that he never really cared about before.<\/p>\n Of course, I was proud when, asked what he would do with the money by grinning givers, he said that the first thing that had to happen was that some of the money had to pay tithing, and some of it had to go into his long-term savings. I was glad that he recognized the importance of those actions.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, he then began babbling about all the expensive things he would buy with the money. Most of the things he listed can’t actually be bought with $75. But he’s 10, and his concept of what things actually cost is diminished. All he knew was that he ended up with what, to him, amounted to a massive windfall, and he began imagining riches beyond the dreams of avarice.<\/p>\n All of a sudden, his rather modest goals for his money became insufficient, and discontent reared its ugly head. Realizing that he wouldn’t be able to buy all those things immediately put him in a foul mood. (We discussed reality\u00a0after<\/em> he had thanked his benefactors and got off the Skype chat.) He became grumpy when he began to understand that $75 wouldn’t cover what he thought it would.<\/p>\n I realized that he was happier with the $10 and $20 gifts he had received from others than he was with the $75. He knew\u00a0exactly<\/em> what to expect with those amounts. He knew how to parse them down, and understood the way they would work with his goals. However, the $75 was more than he was ready for.<\/p>\n Really, I wasn’t sure what a 10-year-old would buy with that money anyway. He’s\u00a010<\/em>. We buy his clothes, and if he gets a more expensive item, it’s usually for his birthday, or for Christmas<\/a>. There’s no real reason for him to have so much cash in hand. It’s hard to tell an excited child that\u00a0almost all<\/em> of that money has to go into savings. He got it as a gift. So he doesn’t want to use it to buy needs<\/a>, and I worry that forcing him to put most of into savings will turn his love of his savings account to resentment.<\/p>\n For now, we’ll just try to balance it out, and show him how the money, even after tithing and savings, can help him finish reaching his goal for something he’s had his eye on for a long time.<\/p>\n What do you think? Do children need big money gifts?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My son just turned 10. He received some good, solid gifts from a variety of folks. He also received a few money gifts, in the range of $10 to $20. That makes sense to me. What I don’t understand is why one of his gifts was $75. Does a 10-year-old really need a $75 money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[515],"tags":[120,74,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/couponshoebox.com\/tips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Some of that Money Goes to Savings<\/h3>\n
What Does a 10-Year-Old Buy with $75 Anyway?<\/h3>\n