Kids, Expensive Toys, and Life Lessons

By Julie Frans, Chief Community Officer

My son, John, lives to bike. Every minute of every day, he’s got biking on the brain. Just about every social media feed he follows, every Youtube clip he watches, every day his first choice of activities… biking. 

To clarify, he's not just into riding a bike. He's obsessed with jumps, tricks, and stunts. The bigger the jumps, the crazier the stunts... that's where he is. 

He had several types of bikes: a BMX, a "hard tail," and a double suspension mountain bike, but he needed a dirt jumper… a “DJ,” as he called it. He needed the right kind of bike to do the type of biking he was getting more and more into. 

He started doing research on bikes, looking online and asking his biker friends for recommendations. Bikes were still really hard to find at this time in the late summer of 2021, so John knew that once he found a decent dirt jumper for sale, he’d have to be ready to jump on the opportunity.

He was saving his money for a dirt jumper, and putting in a good effort, but saving enough for a bike was taking a very, very long time.

He quickly figured out exactly what bike he wanted, and he found someone who was selling it on "Offer Up." It was used, true, but it was perfectly customized and exactly what he wanted. It was THE bike. 

He begged me to buy it for him.  Like... begged me to buy it for him. He could not let this opportunity, or this perfect bike, pass "us" by.

The problem? The bike cost $1000. John only had around $350 in his savings.

I understood that this bike was exactly what he wanted, and needed, to progress to the next level of biking. I knew that he was destroying his expensive mountain bike that we had bought him earlier that year as a birthday present. He was doing massive jumps on a bike that was meant for downhill riding, not jumps and tricks. I understood that this was truly a very good opportunity to buy a great bike that had been custom built by a knowledgeable and experienced dirt jumper.

But how could I buy John a $1000 bike? I just couldn’t!

Luckily, we had recently started on our COR journey.  I wasn't too deep into the program, but I had definitely recognized a shift in my thinking, and the way I had started talking about money with my kids.

Before learning the Cents of Responsibility  method, my answer would have been a hard “no” and I would have been the mean mom. I would have robbed John of the opportunity to get his dream bike, and to pursue his passion. He would have resented me every time he biked, knowing that he could have had that perfect dirt jumper. 

Or, I could have said "yes." I could have given in. I could have been the nice mom who spoiled her kid and didn't put reasonable limits or boundaries on spending. 

I could have made up some threats and put conditions about how he would not get any allowance anymore, or birthday or Christmas presents two months later because "this was it!" And forever more, John would know that if he just begged me long enough and hard enough, and could be convincing enough, I would always buckle and he’d get what he wanted.

Before embarking on our Cents of Responsibility journey, I'd thought that I had two options: to be the mean “no” mom who puts the kabosh on fun and passion, or the pushover mom who gives in, and spoils their kids because they beg.

Neither of those were great options.

Thanks to COR, I realized that this was not a black and white question that required a simple “yes” or “no” answer. But rather, this was a golden opportunity for discussion, collaboration, and learning about money together. 

I was able to tap into my COR community in this moment, too, and get some great ideas from other COR parents about how they might approach this "problem."

Thanks to my Cents of Responsibility practice and community support, I was able to turn the situation around so that the decision became John’s decision, not mine, and the discussion about purchasing the bike transformed into a learning experience instead of an emotional tug-of-war. 

He wanted the bike so badly, and needed it to continue doing his chosen sport, and it was, after all, a great bike for a decent price. It was worth it to him to do whatever it took to get that bike.  

In the end, he got the bike. Here's how we got there... 

First, I thought about what bargaining chips I had, and what I needed him to do. I laid out my needs first and we negotiated. Aside from the money, I had one condition I needed met. He agreed to join the school cross-country team and give it his “all” for the season.  This was required as part of the deal, and for that, I agreed to chip in $250 toward the bike. 

Then, we talked money.

I explained how a loan worked and how interest was calculated. We worked out a timeline for how the payback schedule might look.

If the bike cost $1000, and John had $350 to put toward it. I chipped in $250, leaving $400 for him to pay back. 

John gets $13/week for allowance, which adds up to $56 a month.

Typically $5.60 of allowance that goes to savings, so we decided that could go back to paying back the loan, plus another $5.60 from spend, totaling $13.20 per month.

He’d pay $13.20 per month, or more if he had extra spend money left at the end of a month, until the loan was paid off.

We jumped on the offer post, and he got the bike. It was one of the best days of his life, and it has turned out to be, as he knew it would, a total game changer for him in his progression as a biker. 

Between September and November, he paid back around $50 of the $400 loan. 

December quickly came, the month of his birthday and Christmas, when he typically receives a pretty good chunk of money for gifts. John was able to pay back the remaining amount of the loan by the new year using his allowance, and birthday and Christmas money. 

The bike, an expensive "toy," was a critical element to John in his pursuit of his progress and success in his sport. Had I blocked him for getting his dream bike, this story would have a sad ending filled with resentment, regret, and unfulfilled goals and dreams.

Instead, we turned it into a positive learning experience where we all learned important lessons, worked together to solve a problem and accomplish a goal, and in the end, we all won.  This experience actually strengthened our relationship rather than the possible alternative of degrading it. 

Truly... thank you, Cents of Responsibility!