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These days you ask children in the city ‘where milk comes from?’ and you are most likely to get ‘supermarket’ for an answer.
‘Where does money come from?’ Pose this question to your child and the answer you are likely to hear is ATM - ‘a machine,’ ‘a hole in the wall.’
Many children today think getting money is easier than getting a toy from the claw machine in the malls – you just have to insert a card, key in some numbers and ta da… out it comes, always!
Our modern consumer culture reinforces the unwritten equations being formed in their minds;
More money = More stuff = Being Rich = Better Life = More Friends = Better Self Image = Happiness
And its corollary,
Less Stuff = Less Money = Being Poor or ‘Middle Class’ = No Friends = Bad Self Image = Doom
So when, while reading a book, my 9-year-old daughter once asked;
‘Mom, are we rich, or poor or middle class?’
Despite being a financial literacy professional for more than a decade, I found myself unprepared for this question from my kid.
In those few moments my mind raced to find a proper answer to such a seemingly simple question from an innocent kids. I struggled to find an objective answer to a question that may colour my child’s perspective for the rest of her life. Or will it? While I was thinking all this, my kid asked me a couple of more times, holding on to the book she was reading, ‘mom, are we rich, poor or middle class?’
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