I think this may not be a bad way to teach kids the dangers of compound interest, but only if you refund the excess interest afterwards because actually tricking your kid into draining their bank account in interest is a dick move.
You could just ask easily be the bank yourself and save the “interest” for a birthday gift or something later on. This really isn’t a difficult concept to use as a teaching opportunity without just screwing over a kid. Do you teach your kids to not walk into traffic by letting them get hit by a car too?
I mean, we’re talking about borrowing 10 bucks for buying McDonald’s here, I think they’ll probably be able to recover from that just a little faster than they would from getting hit by a car.
That’s why you let them think they lost a bunch of money for a few moments before giving it all back and telling them you love them, but that not everyone loves them in the same way and that real bankers won’t be so kind.
As long as you make sure your kids know that you have their back and you’ll support them through recovering from a setback like that, I think they’ll be fine. Paying them back to erase all the pain of the loss might set an unrealistic expectation because at some point, you won’t be there to bail them out anymore. Just don’t add insult to injury by making fun of them or blaming them for their mistakes.
I think this may not be a bad way to teach kids the dangers of compound interest, but only if you refund the excess interest afterwards because actually tricking your kid into draining their bank account in interest is a dick move.
Eh, valuable lessons generally are valuable because they cost you something to learn.
Anything that’s free we tend to not appreciate very much.
You could just ask easily be the bank yourself and save the “interest” for a birthday gift or something later on. This really isn’t a difficult concept to use as a teaching opportunity without just screwing over a kid. Do you teach your kids to not walk into traffic by letting them get hit by a car too?
I mean, we’re talking about borrowing 10 bucks for buying McDonald’s here, I think they’ll probably be able to recover from that just a little faster than they would from getting hit by a car.
That’s why you let them think they lost a bunch of money for a few moments before giving it all back and telling them you love them, but that not everyone loves them in the same way and that real bankers won’t be so kind.
As long as you make sure your kids know that you have their back and you’ll support them through recovering from a setback like that, I think they’ll be fine. Paying them back to erase all the pain of the loss might set an unrealistic expectation because at some point, you won’t be there to bail them out anymore. Just don’t add insult to injury by making fun of them or blaming them for their mistakes.