Oh this is a very good topic.

I spent much of my lifetime thinking about frugality in terms of “lacking” and “deprivation” where I should have thought about it more in terms of “wise decision making.” Rather than thinking “I can’t afford” something I now see it as “I’m choosing not to buy it.” I’m trying to teach my children to focus on the latter.

I talk to my children a lot about the value of an item. Not in terms of dollars and cents but rather in terms of joy. My children and I review their toy stash every month. We look at all of the toys on the shelf and ask “are you playing with this,” “When was the last time you played with it” and “how do you play with it?”

The last question focuses on whether or not the toy can be played with in multiple ways. For example, blocks can be used to build a bank, an airport, a track for cars. Some toys are multi-dimensional which leads to greater creativity and greater joy. We talk about these aspects of play so my children can make better buying decisions in the future.

I ask my children to weed out the toys they don’t play with and they go with me to the donation center where we give them away. Then we talk about how much we paid for a toy and what we could sell it for now. (Usually nothing.) This works well for my older son who is seven. We talk about better ways we could spend our money or things we could do as a family that don’t cost any money at all.

We do the same when we return from a friends house. If we come home and my kids say “I really want ‘x”” we talk about how often they would play with that toy and whether or not they have a similar toy. Then we talk about our imaginations and try to figure out how we can invent our own version of that toy or play an imaginary game that would produce the same feeling of joy he felt at a friend’s house.

I often redirect to free play. I get my children talking about the fun they have when they play “lava” and jump on cushions to avoid touching the ground. Or how much more fun it is to build a track out of bricks rather than using a prebuilt one that only goes in one direction.

Ultimately we play in ways that do not require much stuff. My children are happy to shoot baskets, play pirates or build new creations with the same set of blocks we’ve owned for years. I often point out the fun we had with very little supplies.

I hope they learn that abundant joy is much more valuable than abundant stuff!

In a world where everything is just within reach I also hope, beyond hope, that my children will learn to think before they spend their hard earned money. I hope that we lead them by example.