So, last weekend my family and I were up in the Catskill Mountains, in upstate New York, at a family-style resort we’ve been going to, on and off, my whole life (my dad used to go there as a teen, that’s how long we’ve been patrons of this particular spot). By “family” I mean a lot of us–my parents, my sister, her boyfriend, her kids, her boyfriend’s kid, my brother and his wife and new-ish baby, and me and my boys.

I’ve written about this sort of vacation before, and I’ll write about the whole multi-generational family vacay again, I’m sure, but for now I bring it up because it was yet another chance for my boys to take in little tiny lessons about money. Specifically, the quarters they asked for so they could feed the machines in the game room and increase their stash of rubber bracelets, fake rings, and sticky frogs. As it was vacation, we were liberal with dips into our pockets for extra quarters after they ran out of the modest amount they extracted from their piggy banks at home.

But it was interesting to watch, especially as I’d just written a piece for the website DailyWorth.com about teaching small money lessons to kids. Not big teaching moments: we weren’t drawing up lessons about compound interest or how the Fed works (which I don’t always get myself). But little ones, like the value of a quarter, a dollar, a couple of bucks. Here’s what I wrote for DailyWorth:

I like to treat my five- and seven-year-old sons, but I don’t want them to believe Silly Bandz fall from heaven, or that my wallet is a magic dollar dispenser. So every time they troll the grocery store with me or get tempted by the snacks for sale at summer camp, I try to impart little money lessons—and they’re actually adding up.

• Dollars and sense. Candy and ice cream at day camp are usually a dollar or less, and my sons didn’t understand why I was reluctant to just hand over a buck or two. So I totted it up for them: $1 per boy, per day, comes to $10 a week. That number produced newfound respect for how much their snacks really cost. And respect is where responsible spending starts.
• Size matters. The other day, I tossed a loaf of raisin bread in the grocery cart, remarking that it cost $3.50 a loaf. My seven-year-old piped up: “The Subway sandwich at camp is $3.50.” Ding! “That’s one sandwich,” I said. “This is a whole loaf of bread—breakfast for you and your brother all week.” And he got it. I could see him mentally comparing the idea of all those breakfasts against a measly six-inch hero.
• No matter how you slice it… I sometimes let the kids buy pizza ($2 a slice)—but I usually stop them at one slice (they want more for competition’s sake with their friends, not because they’re hungry). I tell them: $2 may not be much money, but $4 is too much for a lunch they won’t finish, especially when I have perfectly good food at home. I have to repeat myself (often!), but the other day I heard my older son say to the little guy, “You don’t need two slices of pizza for lunch, you know.”

Of course, I get regular reminders that this is a big learning curve for them—and me. Yesterday was supposed to be Carnival Day at camp, and I gave the kids $5 for the games and activities. Well, the carnival was postponed due to bad weather, but guess who spent the $5 on candy anyway? Sigh. One step forward, two steps back.

Since the last time we went upstate to this particular resort, in those ancient, lovely mountains, we didn’t have a lot of things. We didn’t have, for example, the experience of my father undergoing (successful!) surgery for lung cancer. We also didn’t have my newest nephew, Nico, or know what college my older nephew Nicholas was going to. The point is, we’re growing, we’re changing, we’re together.

And we’re thrifty!

The big payoff? When kids get it about money.

Tell me something: When you hear your child say things like, “Gosh, that’s so expensive,” or “Mom, when we run out of the other cookies, and you have a coupon, can we get the [fill in the blank]?”, would you pat yourself on the back for getting an important money lesson across to him–or would you feel you’ve perhaps burdened him with too much knowledge of your own and the world’s financial realities?

Is a seven-year-old too young to know that you can’t afford to go to Hershey Park (where we’ve never been, but which has been stuck in the kiddo’s head ever since he heard of a magical place that combines rides and chocolate consumption) this year, but maybe next?

Is a five-year-old too young to understand that if Grandma gave him $5, he can get the Mater car, but not the Mater car and another Chick Hicks car to replace the one that went missing somewhere in the house (which itself replaced the one that went missing on show-and-tell day last year in pre-K)?

I don’t think so. In fact, I think that overall it’s gotten so easy to get what we want, when we want it (even when we can’t totally afford it), and so seductive and so easy to shroud our kids from economic pain we may be feeling, that most kids have no cotton-pickin’ idea what things cost, or that things have a cost (or that cotton is something that needs pickin’). Now, I don’t sit my boys down to tutor them on mortgage rates, and my husband and I save our angst-y discussions about money and the future for after they’re in bed. But I’m starting now, right now, to teach them that things have value, that there’s value in waiting for them, and that no, my sweet child, you can’t have the [fill in the blank] cookies today.

I was thinking of this in a serious way lately because of a tip I added to a story I wrote for the excellent website Daily Worth. You can see it here. The piece was about how I stretch my grocery dollars, but it got me pondering how open I am with my boys about the reality of prices, or of our finances.

I don’t think too hard about what I’ll tell them and what I won’t; I figure that when it comes to talking to kids about money — as with talking to them about sex — they’ll take in what they’re currently capable of understanding, and the rest becomes background noise. But if I keep talking–telling them that the reason we shut lights is because the electric company sends us a bill every month for our use of them; or that that we borrowed a very, very big amount of money from a bank to buy our house, and have to pay them back a little bit at a time; or that “on sale” are two of mommy’s favorite words–eventually a lot of it will be absorbed.

The best lesson my father ever imparted was taught slowly and unconsciously over time. He taught me how to handle money, that work brings it in, that things have value, that having things you can’t really afford is ultimately unsatisfying, not to mention dangerous. Not once did he sit me down to explain these things. I just kind of absorbed it, watching him sit at the blue desk (which he still has and which I still covet) and pay the bills, slowly and patiently and carefully, or watching my mother organize coupons and write her shopping list, slowly and carefully.

Tell me what you think. I have a feeling this isn’t going to be my last post about money!