It's Actually Working!

We headed out today as a family of four to our local Wal-Mart Superstore. We had three purposes:
1. To purchase groceries.
2. To purchase gifts for a baby shower (not with our money but with baby shower hostess money. I am the women's ministry leader at our church and sometimes my duties include shopping for showers.)
3. To allow our oldest boy (age 7) to choose something to purchase with Christmas money he had received as gifts. He had a total of $60.

The grocery shopping was very easy - we had a list and only purchased what was on the list. The baby shower shopping was easy - I had a certain amount of funding from the hostesses and spent only that amount.

The part that posed a slight challenge was the shopping our boy, Kelby, was to do. He knew someone had opened a small savings account for him at Christmas and mistakenly believed he could access those funds any time he wanted for whatever he wanted. He learned on this day that this was for his "future." He only had the $60 dollars he brought with him at his spending disposal and began to wonder if the Wii game he was interested in was really worth the $49.99 price. After all, this would only leave him with $10 for quite a long time to come unless he managed to earn money somehow through the year. He then asked if there were any less expensive Wii games elsewhere and there happened to be a rack of games priced around $19.99. He chose one of these and left quite satisfied at getting a game and still having money to spare.

We did get spotted shopping by someone aware of our little project - the peeked inside the cart and seemed satisified! I did explain why I had a cart full of baby items and also explained why Kelby was looking at Wii games! This accountability thing is really working out. Thanks for everyone's interest in our shopping thin program.