Cash Money Is A Symbol Too
I use my debit card for practically everything. I am one of those people who if I have cash, I will spend it. Not huge amounts of cash, but if I have ten dollars left over from something, somehow it gets frittered away on little things that I wouldn’t buy if I was using my debit card. I find it hard to use my debit card to buy small things, which helps on the frittering front.
Recently I’ve been thinking more and more about the methods I use to spend my money, because as my son gets older, he is starting to understand more and more that we buy things and we shop and all sorts of consumer-type behaviors. I don’t like credit cards, and I don’t want my son to think that we have a magic plastic card that we can just swipe and make anything happen. But then I realized, that really, cash is just a symbol too.
Dollars and change represent something. They in themselves as paper and metal really don’t have much value, but they have been given value in our society and are the go-between for the work we do and what we can get for it. So, really, explaining my debit card to my son has a lot of similarities to explaining money in general to him - the money that the card has access to represents what his father and I have earned by doing work or providing services.
So what I’ve come to realize is that what form my buying takes isn’t the important part, as long as I model good behavior with it and explain what I am doing and why. We live in an age of electronic transactions and I feel it would almost be a disservice to isolate my kids from that aspect of society. But the talking is the key - cash or debit or check or credit, whatever I choose to use to buy with, understanding what it means is what will hopefully encourage him (and my daughter) to not make the same mistakes we have.
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June 20th, 2008 at 6:07 am
I agree with you, but did you say you use use debit card for practically everything, although you find it hard to use for small things? I know that it’s a good thing to stay away from the risk of credit card abuse, but in so many cases, it’s much better to
use a credit card instead of a debit card
(provided that you can afford to rapidly pay off the purchase). I do realize that the paying off part is where most people fail, but it’s worth keeping in mind!
June 20th, 2008 at 10:24 am
When I was heading out somewhere last night (w/o my purse), Micah checked to see if I’d taken a debit card. He phrased it “Do you have your symbolic money? Oh wait…I guess you’ve got a symbol of a symbol…” then he just wandered off muttering to himself about the meaninglessness of the economic system.
I think I’d probably explain money in terms of numbers of dollars we have in our bank account. And how we can take it out and use it with our card or with cash money.
Cash in hand is probably still the best way to learn about cents…but once he’s got that, I think you’re right that what matters is that you talk to him. Cash can seem just as unlimited as debit cards.
June 23rd, 2008 at 10:55 am
Even though debit cards/credit cards are convenient,
I will not find myself using them as often as cash
That’s what i feel.