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We borrow money from our kid’s wallets sometimes. I know what you’re thinking: Bad Parents! But let me defend this by saying that a) it is nearly always used for some last-minute kid-related purpose where debit cards aren’t accepted and b) we always return the funds once we’ve had a chance to hit the ATM. Unlike many, more organized parental units, who for all I know must sleep with money belts, for how else are you to come up with $18.50 cash five minutes before the morning bus arrives and you are informed by your son or daughter that today is the last day you can pay for the team sweatshirts that he or she forgot to mention all week? For us the choice is simple: hit up the kid’s wallet stash, where that pile of twenties from the last holiday or birthday awaits.

I must confess however that occasionally my wife and I might be prone to forget to replenish the said cash funds. Luckily we have a safeguard: our middle child Ben, the aspiring accountant/Ponzi scheme artist (he once traded his five one dollar bills for his six year old brother’s one twenty dollar bill – “See, now I have only one and you have five What a deal!”). Ben has an exceptional nose for cash and will handily remind us of any short-fall, down to the last penny. And since he is now 110lbs of angry pubescent thirteen-year old, the conversation typically goes something like this:

HE: Hey, you still owe me twenty dollars.

ME: Oh that’s right – sorry. Busy week, I forgot. Here you go.

HE: I should start charging you interest!

ME: I should start charging you rent!

And it escalates. (I will be clocking in on puberty in an upcoming post, to be sure…)

Basically, our rule of thumb is that we keep their wallets in a safe parental location of our own until they are of a responsible age, which for Josh, the oldest, was when he could finally produce a valid driver’s license. We do this for a couple of reasons a) it prevents them from stealing from each other and b) prevents them freely spending their money on frivolous and otherwise unapproved items (demonstrated by the 8 pound bag of M&Ms we found under Ben’s bed, or the ring of grape colored “Slushie” around his mouth he seems to return with every time he goes for a bike ride in the direction of the local convenience store).

We don’t believe in allowances; this is because the boys receive a decent chunk of cash from their relatives on major holidays and for their birthdays; the sum far exceeding anything my wife and I could pony up on a week-to-week basis. Although we will pay them for the more difficult household tasks and yard work we might ask them to partake in. In my opinion, we have all three boys – Josh, 16; Ben 13 and little Noah, 7 – dialed way into the modern mechanized pantheon of sports and activities that has come to define child-rearing in the new millennium, that they seem to have very little actual down-time at home. Rather than fill up that remaining time with chores that would justify a subsequent allowance, I’d rather let their present income stream stand as is; it certainly frees up a little cheddar to help offset the cost of all these sports and activities. It also provides a convenient rational if they ever ask why they don’t get an allowance.

We must have done something right with our nebulous system of monetary rewards. Right, that is, if our ultimate goal is to raise budding young Capitalists, for the two older boys recently decided to spend a good chunk of their own money to set up a dedicated Minecraft server that will be run from the broadband internet connection out of our house. (Minecraft, for those out of the multi-player online gaming loop, is an immensely popular game where players construct their own houses, cities, whatever, with block elements that they “mine” from the ground. These “worlds” in which they build on are housed on any one of a network of servers that the more ambitious players set up and make available. Players who like the terms and conditions of a particular server may donate funds to the server owner(s) in order to obtain more privileges and higher standing in a mock governmental hierarchy. Josh told me that the owner of the server he’s been on receives hundreds of dollars in donations. That was before he got banned from the server in question--something about being involved with the construction of a giant phallic structure in the middle of one of the cities-- hence the necessity for needing to create a server of his own.

And on it goes. But with any luck, by the time they are in college, they might be on their way to actually being financially independent. At which point I might actually start charging rent…