Yesterday I went on some errands with my two sons. Our first stop was at the ATM machine to deposit some money that we had withdrawn, but ended up not spending. My oldest son asked, “Mom, how come you’re putting your money back into the bank? Why don’t you just keep it out?”
I shared with him about how when a person has money with them, the temptation is to spend it. But if money is kept in the bank, the inconvenience of having to get it out of the bank tends to override the desire to spend it. Out of sight, out of mind. He seemed to get it.
While we were out, we shopped for new sneakers for this same son. Ross and I had budgeted to spend $25 because, believe it or not, there are still sneakers out there that you can get for $25. Anything above that amount and our son would foot the rest of the bill.
When he did find the sneakers that fit him well and that he liked, they were $30. I persuaded him to go to one more shoe store a few doors up to see if they might have a better price. They did, have a better price, a price so good that he would not have had to pay any money towards the shoes and we would have been under our $25 budget. However, he was set on having the $30 shoes. So we went back to the previous store.
The cashier who rang up our purchase told us that if we became a member of their rewards club, we could get an additional 5% off of our purchase. I said, “Sure!” So instead of having to spend his whole $5 that he had brought with him, our son only had to spend $2.50. Guess what he did? Immediately he began to look around for what else he could buy to go with the shoes—socks, shoelaces, etc. I chuckled to myself and reminded him of the temptation of having money with you that we had discussed only an hour earlier. “Oh, yeah,” he remembered. He got it.
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