Lori and Marek Fuchs have never fought in their 16 years of marriage—except over money. In this column, Mr. and Mrs. Fuchs, a real-life married couple with three kids (ages 12, 7 and 5), articulate their very different approaches to personal finance.
This round, she says: the kids should get a lump sum allowance. He says: let's start saving for bail, our children will be robbing banks after they overspend what they've got.
Mrs. Fuchs: You’re not going to believe this.
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Mr. Fuchs: What?
Mrs. Fuchs: Well, we’re about a month behind in giving the kids their allowance. Again. Allowance is supposed to teach them how to budget their money, but I bet it only works if I actually give it to them. I want them to go into adulthood knowing how to plan and budget like they know how to breathe. Maybe we should jettison allowance and do what my parent did. Just give them a lump sum.
Mr. Fuchs: A lump sum? They haven’t even realized we haven’t given them allowance. Let’s at least wait until they start hounding us for what we’re in arrears to them for before we start handing over lump sums.
Mrs. Fuchs: Let me finish. I got a lump sum every six months and I had to buy everything, including clothes, myself. If I ran out – that was my problem. Let me tell you, I leaned to budget.
Mr. Fuchs: Sweetie, we’ll have the world’s first five year-old bank robber.
Mrs. Fuchs: OK, OK—good point. I got ahead of myself. I actually had to start babysitting because instead of socks, I bought Shaun Cassidy records. So maybe the kids have to be there developmentally. But at 12, our oldest might be. She has some sense of the passage of time and can make decisions that weigh the short term against the long-term.
Mr. Fuchs: Better than me.
Mrs. Fuchs: She got it from my side of the family.
Mr. Fuchs: Is there a good attribute she didn’t get from your side?
Mrs. Fuchs: Hmm. Anyhow, this is a good way to teach budgeting to a 12 year-old, a lifelong lesson.
