![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.mops.org\/images\/cms_images\/alex-2.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nSometimes the words come out of my mouth, \u201cI\u2019m sorry honey, we just can\u2019t afford that.\u201d Those are times when it\u2019s the\u00a0 bottom-line reality of the budget.<\/p>\n
But more often I try to say, \u201cThat\u2019s not how we choose to spend our money.\u201d Because the truth is, no matter the size of a family\u2019s budget, how we spend money has a lot to do with choice. I want my children to learn early on that money is a finite resource, it has limits, and where we choose to spend in one area impacts others.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve ever had two kids and one cookie you know children understand the concept of a limited resource. There are lots of ways to cut a cookie and my children can argue for hours (I wish I was exaggerating) about how best to do that. So the question is not whether they can grasp the concept, but rather have they been introduced to it?<\/p>\n
Lest you think we are rollin\u2019 in it, based on our family income and size we fall smack dab in the middle of America\u2019s middle class. In this regard we are the definition of average. In fact, lots of people we know would say we live rather simply. (My dented minivan and I just celebrated our ten-year anniversary.) But I also know for every family that has \u201cmore\u201d than us (materially speaking here), there are exponentially more around the world that have considerably less. It\u2019s all in perspective. And that\u2019s what I want to offer my children when it comes to money: a little perspective.<\/p>\n
At first glance, the majority of our family budget is spent on \u201cneeds\u201d rather than \u201cwants\u201d. Line items like housing, groceries and health insurance are difficult to go without and so we spend money on them. But even within these \u201cneeds\u201d I exercise choice.<\/p>\n
Though we need housing, where we live is a choice.<\/p>\n
Though we need to eat, what I make for dinner is also a choice.<\/p>\n
Where I send my kids to preschool. Or that they go to preschool at all. Yes, a choice.<\/p>\n
So, though many people would say we \u201ccan\u2019t afford\u201d fancy vacations or summer camps, that\u2019s not how I choose to frame it for my children. Because they see we do choose to spend our limited disposable income on certain things and not others. Naturally the questions begin to come up, if we can afford that, why can\u2019t we afford this? This is a great chance to talk about limited resources; it is not too early to instill we have choices in how and where we spend. In other words, kids learn we must prioritize.<\/p>\n
When I consider how I want to prepare my children to view and manage money as earning and spending adults, the underlying principle is that we have some control over how we use what we\u2019ve been given. I want to send these kids into the world understanding that regardless of the size of a budget, they can exercise some choice and use money to enhance their priorities.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alexandra Kuykendall<\/strong> Sometimes the words come out of my mouth, \u201cI\u2019m sorry honey, we just can\u2019t afford that.\u201d Those are times when it\u2019s the\u00a0 bottom-line reality of the budget. But more often I try to say, \u201cThat\u2019s not how we choose to spend our money.\u201d Because the truth is, no matter the size of a family\u2019s budget, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":2239,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[275,256,169,130,276,114],"class_list":["post-2238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-finance","tag-honestly","tag-kids","tag-money","tag-talk","tag-wisdom"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAs a mom to four girls, ages 3 to 12, Alexandra Kuykendall\u2019s days are spent washing dishes, driving to and from different schools and trying to find a better solution to the laundry dilemma. She writes to capture the places where motherhood meets everyday life to remember the small, yet significant moments in the midst of the blur. She is the author of\u00a0The Artist\u2019s Daughter, A Memoir<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>, a contributor to this year\u2019s Be you, Bravely, An Experiment in Courage and acts as the Specialty Content Editor for MOPS International. A city girl at heart, she makes her home in the shadow of downtown Denver. You can read more of Alex\u2019s everyday thoughts and connect with her at\u00a0AlexandraKuykendall.com<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"