No one ever told me what emotions to expect when one of your offspring joins the ranks of the gainfully employed, and so it is with much surprise that I find that my foremost reaction is one of relief. Why relief, you may wonder?##M:[more]##
It’s partly because I am Miss Coupon Girl and my children are not. I don’t know where I went wrong. I faithfully clip and hoard those money-saving pieces of paper, whether they come from a pizza discount on the back of a receipt, a Value-Saver envelope, or any of those other mailers that show up via the postman. My frugal nature was bred into me by my immigrant parents, who lived by the mantra that a penny saved is a penny earned. (Now if I could only figure out the best system to have the right coupon at the right time, instead of fruitlessly digging through my purse at the checkout while lines of irate customers grow behind me.)
My children, on the other hand, believe that coupons are, shall we say, a bit embarrassing, and sometimes I wonder if their mantra goes something like, well, why pay less when you can pay full price and make the economy go round and round? My kids are a marketers dream, making a beeline for the brand new arrivals at the front of the store, instead of zooming to the sale rack which is much more my style. Again, I wonder, where did I go wrong? My only hope is that somehow, subliminally, they have absorbed my lessons of thrift, and with time and wisdom they will change their ways and the notion of frugality will come bubbling up to the surface. The chances are greater that this will happen when the money has to come out of their own wallets and their own salaries. Yes, you may call me an optimist, but there is nothing wrong with living on hope.
But I digress from explaining why I’m feeling relief. My firstborn will be working at the Bent Spoon, an epicurean ice cream shop in the heart of Princeton’s Palmer Square. Not only do we love their ice cream, delicious, luscious, and unique, but we love their philosophy of embracing the “slow food” movement — the idea that great food is produced slowly, with great love and care- and their belief in supporting local farmers by making their products with fresh, organic, locally grown ingredients. My firstborn proudly told me she’ll start at $8.50 an hour, more than the minimum wage, and I figure that after taxes, she’ll make something just above $7 an hour.
No doubt she’s spinning daydreams about what she’s going to do with her first paycheck and I can say dream on, little one, but I know that the first thing she’s going to do with that paycheck is to pay me back the $55 in bank fines she owes me. What bank fines, you’re wondering? How does a teenager incur bank fines? Apparently, much too easily.
It was not a pretty Saturday morning around here recently when I found one particular item of mail in our mailbox. It was a note from the bank saying that a recent purchase on her debit card had pushed her into the red, and so a $35 fine had been levied. Compounding my distress was that just the week before, I had received a similar notice informing me of a $20 fine for the same infraction, and had clearly made the point that money that does not exist cannot be spent. This second infraction occurred on a purchase of $34.23, which meant that with the $35 fine, she had effectively spent 200 percent on whatever item it was.
“My coupon clipping days are over,” I had roared. “Why should I derive any satisfaction out of saving 20 percent on anything when my children think it’s okay to spend 200 percent?”
Do the math. You get my point. If my daughter does the math, she’ll realize that on her salary of a net seven to eight dollars an hour, it will take her just about the same amount of time — seven to eight hours — to make the $55 she has to pay me back. It will be, no doubt, a painful but memorable lesson on the value of money, and why spending responsibly is one of the first things you have to learn in life.
This is why I am relieved that she now has a job, something that will teach her lessons about personal finances that I clearly have not done effectively enough. There’s nothing that will make you more careful about how you spend your money than having to earn it yourself. I will also admit to a sense of pride. She got the job she really wanted, a job where she’ll have fun, learn the value of hard work, and the skills of good customer relations.
Now that she’ll be bringing home her own paycheck, will she start clipping coupons and scouring the sale racks? I think not, perhaps not immediately, at least, but one can only hope. Maybe she will turn over a new leaf some day, just in time to drive her own daughter crazy.
There’s one more emotion I am feeling and that’s amusement. I find a certain historical symmetry in the fact that my first job was scooping ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins. Back in those days, we had to wear pink uniforms with white aprons and a jaunty pink cap. No doubt my daughter is relieved that some things have changed, and frankly, so am I, but frugality is a quality that will never go out of style.
Editor’s Note
Euna Kwon Brossman, the Suburban Mom, will appear at Borders Books in Nassau Park on Saturday, May 3, from noon to 3 p.m. for a signing of her new book, “Suburban Mom: Tales from the Minivan of Life.”
The book is based largely on a compilation of Suburban Mom columns printed since 2003 in the West Windsor-Plainsboro News.
