Money and gifts

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stephen1958

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It may sound scrupulous, but I wonder what you are thinking about it. When you get money or gifts for your little or minor children what are you doing with it? You can save the money and give it to them when they get adult, are you can use it for their education and opbringing. My problem is that when our children were very young we get some money from my parents with the notice it was for our children and I can not find a way out if I should give the money to them, now they are getting adults or if I could she it as a gift for the education etc of my children.
 
My mom sends money for Christmas. When they were little I took the money and bought the presents and tagged them from grandma. When they got older I let them pick out their presents after Christmas and then they had to call grandma and thank her for XXXXXX (the things they picked out). Now grandma sends them money directly and giftcards to their favorite stores.
 
We have college funds set up for the kids. We aren’t struggling to buy groceries, and my girls have too many toys. So the money goes straight into the college fund, and the grandparents know that when they give monetary gifts.
 
If it is a gift and money, part of it goes in savings (about 45%), part of it goes to church (about 10%), and part of it gets spent by the child (about 45%). If it’s a gift card, well, we’re still working on that. I might “buy” back a gift card for cash, and then the cash rules apply.
 
My thoughts…

You should really follow a plan similar to above.

Put some (or most) in savings.

Save a little bit out of the pot to allow your child to buy somthing they like for themselves - candy or a small toy. (Take them to the dollar store)

Then you may show them how to take some of it and place it in the basket at church.

Please don’t spend it as if it is yours (unless you need it for food).

Anecdote:

**A relative of mine tells of a story of how he would get money each time Grandpa came to visit. **

He saved it in a little wallet.

One day the wallet was empty and his mother bought new “ugly” drapes for his bedroom.
(he was around 6 years old)

Now all he remembers is that his mother stole his money and bought something he did want or like.

What kind of message was that ? He learned never to save his money and never to trust his mother… believe it or not he’s had a hard time forgiving her after 20 years.
 
Here’s the compromise I worked out with my kids. Any cash or gift cards are theirs to do what they want. Any checks go in their savings accounts. Their grandparents and aunts & uncles know this too. It’s nice, because then there is no squabbling about it.
 
Any money given to my kids, or to me for my kids, goes in their piggy banks. When they want something special, they have the money to buy it. My kids are 3.5 and 2 years old (and 2 months, but he doesn’t have any money yet), so it isn’t a huge deal to them yet what we do with their money.

My dh and I have talked and we plan on using their money to teach them banking when they get older. We will buy each of them a safe to put their money in and we will keep that safe. We will be their bankers. They will get a checkbook register to keep track of how much money they have and where they are spending it. We figured we will start this when they are in about second grade. Basically we want them to have mastered simple math.

This way we figure we will teach them the value of a dollar and resposibility as well. Plus, it will help with their math skills is a real-life way.
 
Kanda said:
Any money given to my kids, or to me for my kids, goes in their piggy banks. When they want something special, they have the money to buy it. My kids are 3.5 and 2 years old (and 2 months, but he doesn’t have any money yet), so it isn’t a huge deal to them yet what we do with their money.

My dh and I have talked and we plan on using their money to teach them banking when they get older. We will buy each of them a safe to put their money in and we will keep that safe. We will be their bankers. They will get a checkbook register to keep track of how much money they have and where they are spending it. We figured we will start this when they are in about second grade. Basically we want them to have mastered simple math.

This way we figure we will teach them the value of a dollar and resposibility as well. Plus, it will help with their math skills is a real-life way.
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You could pay them interest too, so they learn about that.
 
Just don’t let them take things out on credit;). America has too big a problem with that.
 
Kanda said:
Any money given to my kids, or to me for my kids, goes in their piggy banks. When they want something special, they have the money to buy it. My kids are 3.5 and 2 years old (and 2 months, but he doesn’t have any money yet), so it isn’t a huge deal to them yet what we do with their money.

My dh and I have talked and we plan on using their money to teach them banking when they get older. We will buy each of them a safe to put their money in and we will keep that safe. We will be their bankers. They will get a checkbook register to keep track of how much money they have and where they are spending it. We figured we will start this when they are in about second grade. Basically we want them to have mastered simple math.

This way we figure we will teach them the value of a dollar and resposibility as well. Plus, it will help with their math skills is a real-life way.
Click to expand...
This is excellent. You might want to see if there’s a place with something like the KidsBank program, where you can get your children, when they turn eight or nine, a very small but working checking account. It beats having to set up the Bank of Parents, and it is “real”…with “real” consequences.
 
If it weren’t a matter of them eating or not eating, or having clothes to wear or not, we would never spend it on necessities. Feeding and clothing them is our job, and except for luxuries they may want to treat themselves to, it will be until they are grown. If our finances were different, I think I’d still keep track of how much of their cash we spent, so they’d get it back some day. The gift was for them, not us. As for their education, we may expect them to work for that when they are old enough, but we don’t expect them to spend their birthday and Christmas presents on it, except by their own choice.

When our kids were little, we took gifts of money and bought something for the kids that they would like, told them it was from Grandma and Grandpa (because it always was), and banked the rest for them in a savings account.

Now that they are older (since they were about first grade), we let them decide what to do with it. To encourage saving, they may choose to put it in The Bank of Mom & Dad, where they earn 4% *a month…*that is, a penny on the quarter. I probably don’t need to say that they are very much into saving, because the returns pile up quickly enough to impress them. They do realize that they won’t get these kinds of returns forever, but I think that by the time they get older, the point will have been made. After all, as a fraction of their life, a month is a LONG TIME. When they consider spending the money, we generate a table that shows the difference in how much money they will have in a year if they spend or save now. I don’t think they have ever spent a dime, once it went into the Bank of Mom & Dad.

As for giving to the poor, they primarily do this by foregoing a meal out or some other treat, in the interest of donating the money to a good cause.
 
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