Life lessons for $1

“It’s only a dollar,” isn’t a statement that should fall easily from our lips when we are talking to youngsters.

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To a small child, $1 can buy the whole wide world – enough candy to make them sick, a new car for their mother, all sorts of toys and a large-screen television. A youngster doesn’t equate the $15 price tag as being more than the $1 burning a hole in his pocket.

Recently, I overheard a father tell his child, “It’s only a dollar” as they shopped the Dollar Tree.

Wrong lesson here dad.

Yes you were probably tired, exhausted even, and your child had asked a million question during the day but a $1 should not be “only a dollar.”

Ask those unemployed, ask the homeless and ask those who grew up in the Depression of the 1920s – ‘30s era and they’ll agree.

For someone making the $7.25 minimum wage,  $1 represents eight minutes of work and that doesn’t account for withholding and Social Security.

Holding on to the $1 and adding it to another dollar allows someone to get something bigger and better on down the road. Everything can’t be about instant gratification.

As a youngster, I remember getting coin holders from a savings banks – remember the days when your checking account was at one bank and your savings account was at another – for saving my coins. The one I especially remember was of a kitty cat for dimes. Each time you added a dime more, a portion of the kitten would show until you could see the whole kitten in the illustration.

Completing one of those folders brought a sense of satisfaction, and if my memory serves me right, it made me $3 richer.

A bank president told me one time how he and his wife would make a list of items that they wanted to buy and then save up the money until they could pay cash for the items on the list. Doing things that way kept them from building up too much debt and most of us have to incur some debt for the big purchases in life.

Notice how many times you get a discount coupon from a department store and the coupon can only be used with a charge card purchase. That’s because when we charge items we are not as careful with our money. In the end, we charge more than we can afford to pay in one time and the store gets to charge us a bunch of interest.

The end result is the blouse is faded before the bill is paid off and we have a case of buyer’s remorse.

As parents and grandparents teaching our children the value of a buck is a lesson that will serve them well the rest of their lives.