I gave my 7 year old daughter her first purse today, together with her first allowance. I wanted to start teaching her the value of money and how to manage it properly. She threw me a puzzled look and start asking questions i.e. what is an allowance? I explained to her that starting from today I would only give her 200,000 to 250,000 dong per week and she has to manage herself with the money (what to buy and how much to saved) and if she finished all the money she will have to wait for the next Saturday for another allowance. She seems to understand the concept and happily put the money in her bag for an outing with me.



She first asked to go to the toy shop to buy a present for her friend's birthday tomorrow. She bought a huge present which include the wrapping, cost more than 200,000 dong. She doesn't even seems to mind to spend almost all of her money for the present. Initially, I'm quite worried to see this.

At the SuperMarket, as I was about to pay for some groceries she told me that she previously saw a cute bowl and wanted to buy it. She then ran to get the bowl and pay for it. Again, I was worried. There were dozens of bowls at home, there is no need to buy one. She never asked to buy something like this before and now that she has the money she bought something that is quite unnecessary. Although it just cost about 9000 dong and I have to admit that it is cute but now I'm worried that instead of teaching her the value of money I'm turning her into a shopaholic (like one of her auntie ;P)..



Later we stumbled into this 50th Barbie Anniversary Promotion, for just 20,000 dong (RM4).. They'll groom the children into princesses and have their picture taken. Nilam told me that she wanted to do it and for the first time I saw the worried look on her face when she asked me whether she has to pay for it. That really leaves me in a dilemma; I do not know how much money that she have left and I'm afraid that later if she doesn't have enough money I might have to add some and I really don't want to do that. Eventually I told her that this one is on me and I'll pay for it this time. I also stressed that I'll pay for something like this (movies, circus etc..) but for stuff like storybooks etc she'll have to buy it herself. She then happily went for the photo session..


As soon as we reached home, she immediately start counting all her money and proclaimed that she still have 26,000 dong. She then placed her purse safely in her drawer before taking a nap.


And here I am, still thinking to myself whether what I did today is actually a good decision or not..