@seawall
Let him participate in your own budgeting. Try to make spreadsheets fun, if possible. Add things that he wants, and make him a budget that he has to balance - nothing big, of course, for now. Priorities and understanding of money rolled into one.
@seawall If you're okay with anti-advice ... don't introduce the concept of bills too early. Like, say, before mid-teenage years when the concept of recurring bills starts to be applicable.
Speaking from experience: I was parentalized waaaay too early, and "helping with the bills" was one of those adulting things. I ended up maybe a little more financially responsible, but at the cost of having real trouble spending "fun" money on myself and my family, decades later. (Yay, therapy?)
@seawall But to be fair ... until I left for college, we were hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck poor. So the cost of doing bills wrong was "f*ck, all 5 of us are eating ramen noodles for every meal for the next 2 weeks". And I took on a bunch of that anxiety. Pre-teens.
If y'all are not in that position, such that "helping with the bills" isn't potentially traumatic, it's probably not as big a deal.
I actually really do appreciate that I was taught to be responsible with money.
@rick yeah, that makes sense eh. We're only on my husband's income because I'm homeschooling our special needs kid, we just bought a house and we're trying to be budget conscious, is all. And kid has been doing stuff like trying to pour out and eat all the maple syrup, ketchup etc, and saying "Let's buy more!" so we mainly want to impress responsible spending so far lol
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