Sunday, November 27, 2011

Lambs shopping trip

When the Lambs receive birthday money or money as gifts other times of the year, we have tried to teach them to manage their money. We have tried to have them put 10% in the Sunday School offering, 50% in savings at the bank, and Ewe kept the other 40% for their spending. Vacations are usually to grandma's house, not to a place where they could go shopping. We lived so far from shopping that they rarely had a chance to go spend their money. Lamb 1 spent about $20 on Legos after his birthday last March. So each Lamb had between $30-$50 of spending money. Recently they were complaining that Ewe kept the $ and said they were for spending but they never had a chance to spend them. They also had $ from their art store to spend.
So after we arrived at the Old Faithful visitor center and found out we had about an hour before the next eruption, we took the Lambs to the gift shop. We told them they could spend as much money as was in their envelope or save all of it. Lamb 1 chose a stamper with a buffalo footprint, a small sticker book, a plastic buffalo, and a bookmark. Lamb 2 and 3 each chose a set of small plastic animals and a few bigger plastic animals. One was trying to convince his brothers if they each got a plastic buffalo then they could have a buffalo jam, but one brother didn't want that, he wanted a bear.
When we got up to the register the cashier could see they were spending their own money and she was very patient as they each counted out their money and paid. She gave them several free bookmarks, some were quite fancy. She gave them change with shiny new 2011 coins.
I was quite proud of their first shopping experience. They each chose reasonably priced items and got what they wanted but saved much of their spending money for their next chance to go shopping. After our shopping then we went to sit and wait for Old Faithful to erupt.

1 comment:

Melrose said...

that's really cute :) I'm planning a chore chart thing where each spot checked off each day gets 10 cents. At the end of the week we'll count up the spots they checked off and pay them. The same thing will happen where 10% goes into offering, 50% into savings and the rest for spending. I'm excited for them to not only learn about money but about taking helping out in the home to the next level.