Nicole's First Paycheck

Nicole has a job and recently received her first paycheck. She rides the school bus home with a neighbor Kindergarten girl, brings her to our house for a snack, often sits down with her to start her homework, and then escorts her home, often sooner than she would really like, because at the moment we have swimming after school at four.

She has earned her own money and even had to defer gratification as the mom waited for several trips (at one or two each week that also meant several weeks) before paying Nicole. Personally, I thought this was great, because it mimics real life where one has to wait to get paid.

I told her her dad only gets paid once a month (yeah, but we're used to it now, and now that I have transitioned to online banking, I know EXACTLY where we are standing, or sinking as the case may be). That caught her attention and her experience put it all into new perspective. She took her lump sum of cash (she asked me to please cash her check at the bank and get all ones, so it looked like more money...am I raising a materialist?) to the book fair at school the other night and spent about 75% of it, but was very content and pleased with her purchases.

My favorite was a pink and green pen - it looks like a huge makeup brush. The pen part is green and the brush part is pink. Plus she bought me my very own cool pink eraser. Very sweet. And I am pleased with the several great experiences that resulted.