When I was really small I received an allowance of five dollars every two weeks from my parents.  My siblings, who are eight and ten years older than me, received more and were expected to use their money for some of their personal expenses.  I was expected to put my money into different jars.   One dollar and fifty cents for spending, one for gifts, one for savings, and 50 cents for my giving to our local church.  This was a great way for my parents to teach me to manage the little bit of money that I received.  I was very diligent in saving for toys that I wanted and was good at keeping the money separate for the different categories.  In fact this would have been a great system had I been an only child.  This, however, was not the case.

You see my brother, Black Sheep, and I shared a room.  Despite my parents best efforts Black Sheep was not good at managing his money.  He was more of an instant gratification kind of person (he’s gotten a little better).  So he would blow through his money and then have a week or week and a half with no dough.  It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned that he would steal money from my jars.  In looking back this all made sense, because I had vivid memories of opening a jar, thinking I had saved enough money to purchase a specific toy, and the jar being short the amount of money that I could have sworn there should have been (like I said I was diligent).  I did have a bank account that housed larger sums of money given to me by my parents and grandparents, but I didn’t really understand the usefulness of this account.  If I had been making regular deposits into the bank and keeping track of the money on paper my savings would have been safe from the evil clutches of Black Sheep and I would have had the beginnings of balancing a check book (I have always been talented at math and would have been able to handle this by age four). This lack of control in my finances caused me to spend money more quickly instead of defering gratification for larger goals.  It took me a while to break myself of that habit and it probably would not have been a problem if I had understood the banking system better.  Also, I still hate keeping a check book so my wife does that part of our finances. I may have been more open to keeping a check book, before I got married, if I had the experience of doing this from an early age.  My wife started keeping a check book at age 15 and is a pro.  This makes me think we should start teaching our children to keep a check book as soon as they are able to add and subtract.  By doing so we are teaching them life skills that will set them up to be more successful with money.  It sure is something I wish I had known.


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