And She Knows About Money

Years back, I’d heard my friends say that their kids think of money as something you got out of an ATM, not as something you earned! Nowadays, people like us make most of our payments online or via credit cards, so I thought it would be a long time before my kid even realized there was such a thing called money. You’d think I’d have learnt my lesson by now that a kid will always prove you wrong…

We’ve kept (some of) the money my daughter got from people from the time she was a baby in “her” purse. As a result, she’s seen money. More importantly, she knows it is her money. Believe me on that last part: when we tried to take some change from her purse one time, her fangs came out.

Then there was this time when my daughter came back from play and asked, “Do you have a crore rupees?” Oh man, so this is what 6-7 year old’s talk about these days, I thought. Promptly, I replied, “No, I don’t” thinking that would nip whatever it was she wanted to buy/spend it on. Instead, she responded, “Don’t worry, I have a lot of money. I can lend some to you”. Lend, not give.

One time, when the bill for a biscuit packet came to 11 bucks, I gave a 20 rupee note. My daughter was horror-stricken. “He asked for 11, why are you giving him 20?”, she demanded. If you continue like this, what will I ever inherit, I could imagine her thinking. Don’t worry, I told her, he’ll give me back the extra amount. But I need to know subtraction to calculate how much he should give me back, I said as un-subtly as I could. The message was received, but she had that caught-in-two-minds expression: was I telling the truth? Or was I was trying to trick her into learning things?

Her maths book had this chapter on Coins and Money. It started with a pic of the different currency notes. In passing, I mentioned the changes needed to that pic because of demonetization. A few days later, while revising that chapter, she looked at the pic and asked, “You said the 1,000 rupee note isn’t valid, the 500 note has been replaced, and there’s a new 2,000 rupee note, right?” Boy, she sure is selective about what she remembers. And then she asked, “Why did they get rid of the 1,000 rupee note?” Note to self: I need to teach her about demonetization.

Ever since a couple of her friends shifted to the US, she’s been fascinated with America as the “best place ever”. Donald Trump would be so happy to hear that. We’ve tried finding out what she knows or associates with America, but to no avail. Forget Harry Potter, she needs to start reading Ayn Rand!

Nowadays, my daughter will fight off my attempts to cuddle her. During one of those “battles”, she surprised me by saying, “You can hug me if you give me a hundred dollars”. I had no idea she even knew that there were other currencies. I guess payment by Bitcoins is coming up next!

Money, her money, lending (not giving), not giving more than what you owe, demonetization, a fascination with America, and payment in dollars: it’s obvious she’s headed for a career in finance. More specifically, to Wall Street, in her “best place ever”: America.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarJanuary 1, 2018 at 11:41 AM

    Good and a different one on how children look at the world.

    Happy to see that the little one is able appreciate money and its ways. Kids have their own ways of placing things!

    Hope the kids in our affluent societies learn to value money too, seeing that the blog says, "Money can come out of ATMs", instead of the concept of 'earning money' so that it is available. (The classic version for 'money comes out of ATMs' is 'Money must be growing on plants'). :-)

    [There is a parallel, in a different context of course. I recall in a movie there was a scene in which the lovers were in a farm. The the fiance who was a country person. He caught a farm hen as it was running and started butchering it for the chicken-dish for their lunch. Seeing this, the city-bred fiancee was horrified. Surprised, he asked her, "How else do you get meat for cooking?". Naively and honestly she replied, "From the supermarket shelf!"]

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