the emotions of money

During one of our first meetings with our financial coach, Aidan, she told us that at some point during Project Money we’d have to make fiscal decisions that would have an emotional impact.

For us, that day came on the Fourth of July.

Eric, Barrett and Cole headed off to the Madison Mallards baseball game at Warner Park. Big thanks to our neighborhood friends who happened to be giving away their tickets for the game — we were able to go and not take quite as much out of the entertainment budget. There were fireworks after the game to celebrate Independence Day, but some sparks also flew into the stands during the game.

A visit to the team store led to ongoing discussions between Eric and one of the boys. He wanted a Mallards hat (price tag of $30). It’s easy to see why he would ask for the hat — that’s just the sort of purchase we would typically make for our kids. The answer was different this time because that’s just not in the budget, and as noted last week, everything must be in the budget.

While there are many reasons why we’re excited about being involved in Project Money, a big one is that we want our kids to learn financial lessons along with us and hopefully avoid the mistakes that we’ve made. To that end, following Aidan’s advice, we started giving each child an allowance every other week. At the same time, we told them that we would cut back on what we buy them. Obviously, we still provide plenty for them, but when it comes to things that they just want, for example, a baseball cap — they’ll have to use their own money.

This was the first example of the new policy in action. Emotions were high as we each explained our sides of the situation. It was hard. It was frustrating for our son and Eric at the ballpark, and for Kelly back home, who provided Eric with support via mobile messages. Instead of happiness all around after the Mallards’ walk-off win and fireworks, there was tension.

In the end, we didn’t buy the hat. Our son learned that if he really wants that hat, or other things not in our budget, he’ll need to save his own money to buy it. And Eric and Kelly learned that Aidan was right, meaning that we need to be prepared for more financial decisions that have emotional costs. But, if we continue to work together and back each other up, we can do this.