"This is what I've made so far."
She passed me the stack of twenties and I counted them out.
"$240," I smiled at her. "I'm impressed."
"And I get paid again tomorrow," she grinned. "That'll bring me up to $300."
"You're doing a fantastic job."
She trotted off with her wad of bills in hand.
She's spent the last five weeks, her entire summer vacation so far, babysitting for the kids across the street. It wasn't exactly how she had wanted to spend her summer, but the bait of making a few dollars was to much to resist.
"So what are you going to spend your money on?" my mother asked her after she found out about her summertime gig.
"A car."
My mother laughed at her answer, but was quickly met with the determined stare of my 15-year-old daughter.
"I'm serious. I want to buy a car next summer when I get my driver's license."
My mother assured her that she had plenty of time to save money for a car, but she held firm to her original answer. Every penny she earned from her babysitting job would be stashed away for a car.
It was a lesson she had learned from her brother, who, after he turned 16 worked for an entire summer to be able to save enough money to buy his first car. She watched him scrape together every last cent he had so that he could purchase the $1500 car from the local car lot.
That summer her brother taught her a valuable lesson about money:
If you want to buy something, you have to save your pennies to be able to get it.
That summer also reinforced an important "mom rule":
If you want to have your own car, you have to buy it yourself.
"So if I start saving my money early," she said during that same summer, "then I can buy a nicer car, right?"
"That's how it works."
Now we'll just have to see exactly how dedicated she is to achieving her goal.
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