Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Raise Them RIGHT!
Yesterday, I ran through Target to finish up my needs for the week and my 4-year-old daughter spotted a book she really wanted, "Strawberry Shortcake" something or another. As a teacher, I LOVE the fact my kids love to read!!! Absolutely, I was tempted to grab that impulse buy, with its $5 price tag, just to see my cutie reading a book! She still had Christmas money in her piggy bank and we could have easily grabbed it. The problem? It wasn't on sale. My mother taught me to shop (and she did it well, thank you very much!) and the shopping rule is , "if you don't need it NOW, and it is not on sale, you don't buy it now!" As a child, I understood eventually most everything WOULD go on sale. Out came my inner teacher, "Look at the red tags over here. See that? It means this is on SALE! Strawberry Shortcake is not on sale, but we will check back next time we are here and we will buy the book when it goes on sale." Suprisingly, my daughter agreed (no fuss?!! I have a witness to this too!) After checking out with my goodies (some great Target sale price+ Target coupon+ Manufacturer coupon= SWEET deals! Check out my free nail polish!) the cashier handed me my receipt and a Catalina machine (those Target coupon printer things) coupon for, ironically, $2 off a children's book of $5 or more! I made sure to make an impression! I put the coupon in her piggy bank, and then tonight I took her and her piggy bank and her coupon off to Target to get her book that went on "sale" with its coupon. Needless to say, she was THRILLED, I was glad I could follow through so that she does not interpret "When it goes on sale...." to mean, "I am never going to buy this for you...." Now I can postpone her spending money until we find great things at a great price! It didn't hurt that the cashier broke her $20 bill, so now she thinks she has "more money" since she got back more than one bill (I didn't correct her, I trying to teach a lesson here!!!) On the way home, she asked me if I was "impressed" (yes, she is not even 4 and a half yet!) And I said, "I am VERY impressed." It is certainly a great time to begin teaching my daughter about saving money!
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I wanted to share a response from facebook to this post....
ReplyDeleteI think that the word,"sale", is overused in our retail genre!! Being a retailnista means finding a great deal that one store has over another. Shopping around. Not buying on impulse. The retail world is one that uses the consumers perception of value to their advantage. At the end of day, the store usually wins. That little
Piece of paper that came out of the register made you revisit their store another time which you may or may not have done so quickly. Yes, when something is on sale that's most likely a good thing, but we must dive further and look for value and what the price is of the same good somewhere else. A lot of times stores up the prices of items that they will put on "sale" or have coupons that week. Retail shopper beware is all I'm saying. And yes, I'm a marketing major nerd that has been in retail for nearing 20 years..........don't hate me ;0)
Very good points brought up here! We do need "buyer beware". I am certainly guilty of impulse buys many times, too! I was just happy I was able to positively reinforce my little one so she can handle me saying "no" to items based on price (rather than other little white lies I often tell her when I don't want to buy something!) in the future. We actually were heading out to the library (which we did first, she picked out lots of Dora books there--for free :)(Target happened to be across the street)so we packed the piggy bank in my purse with the intention of buying her book, and a forgotten item from yesterdays shopping list--a loaf of bread for lunches. Of course, "a good deal" is very relative to each person...I know some who consider "splurges" to be bare necessities to other...and some whose "bargain" is more than I spend in a month...
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