She finally did it!! After months of saving the “commission” money that she receives for doing weekly chores, hoarding funds received for her birthday and Christmas, and completing random household tasks for extra pay, my nine-year-old daughter finally had enough money to order the American Girl doll she wanted. We placed the order online yesterday afternoon and she will be eagerly waiting for that special package to arrive.
I am proud of her for having the diligence to stick with her goal. A few weeks ago, she went with her sister and I on a shopping trip Claire’s. My seven-year-old had a gift card to spend and, while our oldest looked around and showed me several things that caught her fancy, she was never swayed to take money from what she was saving to get herself something. I’m sure that watching her sister buy several things that day, while she came home empty-handed, was not easy, but she never showed signs of discontent.
One of our parenting goals is to teach our girls how to handle money wisely. I trust that this doll purchase will be a lifelong lesson in several ways. Learning to determine in advance what you want to buy, then holding off on the purchase until you have the money to pay for it will go a long way towards keeping her out of debt. Because she earned much of the money for the doll by consistently doing her assigned chores around the house, I think she can better understand its value – and that the way to get money is to work for it. I also believe that she will take better care of the doll because all of those dollars came out of her own pocket (time will tell!) I can only hope that I will be a good example for her in being as patient as she has been in waiting to buy the things that I want.
Teaching our daughters to understand the importance of setting goals, be they financial or personal, and striving hard to reach them works for me!
Visit Works for Me Wednesday hosted by We Are THAT Family.
Yea!!! I can't imagine how excited she must be waiting for her precious doll. I know you are proud of her.
Hi Tracy, thank you for visiting my post today. We love that game and it is highly addicting. It is spendy (about 45-50.00) and I've been able to find it at Fred Meyers and Barnes and Noble. Specialty game stores probably have it too…we actually won ours at a New years party. I recommend getting the Extension for 5-6 players if you tend to have friends play too. Also, if I were going to "BUY" it, I would check ebay because it can be found for significantly cheaper but I will say it's well worth it.
My youngest daughter also saved all her money a few years ago and bought the American Girl Bitty Twins! I was so proud of her for sticking to it. She put away all her Christmas and birthday money for it. It let me know she was serious about them.
I think that is an amazing lesson that so many of us even as adults need to learn. I know when I was young in HS my parents made me use my babysitting money for my school clothes. It taught me a lot and also a hard lesson about lending out items too, hurts more when you pay for it and they don't return. Wonderful and inspirational 🙂
Yea for her!! It's so much fun to see our girls be diligent and faithful even in the simple things!
That is awesome! 😀
Trying to teach that to my son. he wants a PSP, but he needs to save for it. 😀