Wednesday, April 10, 2013

ECON 101

In the last week, both the boys have had the opportunity to earn some money and to show me how well I've taught them the value of a dollar. What I've found is that I'm raising one son who will likely never leave home, and one son who will grow up to become a future sweatshop operator.

Jack has been invited to travel to the UK with a Student Ambassador group, but the total cost is more than I'm willing to front. (I'll admit it - I'm a selfish mommy, and if anyone is paying that much money to go to Europe for three weeks, it's going to be me getting the VIP treatment.) However, I agreed to work with him to figure out how he could earn enough money to pay for the trip. In doing so, I get to be cheap AND teach him a life lesson, all at once.

Jack's been earning money babysitting his brother and has been successful enough doing so that we've agreed that he could continue doing so. We've also agreed to sign him up for a Red Cross Babysitting course so that he could babysit other kids. In talking about how much he thought he could charge for babysitting, I taught him the concept of Market Rate - as in, Mom and Dad don't pay it. I won't share how much we paid him for 4 hours of watching his brother the other night, but I'll tell you that I probably broke a few child labor laws because of how little I forked out. Jack doesn't have enough of the killer instinct yet to use that information to force us to pay more. Instead, he thinks everyone else should pay LESS because we pay less. If only it worked that way, son. If only...

After reasonably estimating how much he could make babysitting over the next year, he asked if he could also make money selling baked goods. Baked goods that *I* baked. Um, no. Okay well, what about mowing lawns? He estimated that he could make $3,000 over the next year mowing lawns. Sounds great, but I wanted to know how he planned on accomplishing that. He wants to charge $10 a pop, and mow only 5 lawns a month. Once I walked him through the math he realized that wasn't a business model he should go with. We're still talking through his game plan - I actually think his lawn-mowing biz could work, but it's obvious he needs to rethink his pricing structure and service model. The things you have to deal with when your mom's an accountant.

Sam, on the other hand, is going to do quite well in the business world someday. A friend of mine owns a reading center, and "hired" Sam to do some scissor work and cut out several hundred flash cards. For his time, she paid him $20. He was very easy to get on board, and once he knew the job was his, he meticulously planned how he was going to cut the cards, how quickly he was going to do it, and what he was going to do with the money.

On the day he set aside as Cutting Day, his neighborhood friends came over to play. He was very excited as he told them what he was going to do, and how important he was because he was HIRED to do this, and how fun and cool it is, and - HEY! Do you want to help me!? I'll pay you 50 cents!! TWO WHOLE QUARTERS!!! And I'll be damned if those 3 little kids didn't jump right on board with that game plan while Sam stood off to the sidelines to supervise. Matt and I put a stop to it right away - we watched it play out until it became clear that Sam was hiring his own personal workforce - but with that one interaction he was salesman, supervisor, investor, and capitalist. I was so proud.

Just one more way my kids show how opposite they are. And that I have about 6 more years to teach Jack how to survive in the big, bad world. I bet his brother would teach him. For a price.

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