The Bike

This summer we decided that it was time for Shannon to hand down her bike to Keira and get a bigger one for herself.  We decided that we would use this and teach her the need to save.  We didn't ask her to save for the whole thing, just $30 towards it.  That shouldn't be hard right?

How wrong was I?  Oh my goodness, I never knew how hard it was going to be.  Shannon did very well at earning money towards her bike but had a difficult time with not spending it (I know, I know, that's most of us right?).  She frequently visited the gas station with friends and treated them to whatever, spending $10 - $15 a shot!  It was sooooo FRUSTRATING!

We finally decided that drastic measures needed to be made for her to take this task seriously.  We lowered the seat on her bike and told her that the bike now belonged to Keira and she no longer had one to ride until she had the $30.  Believe it or not there was still one more episode of 'spending' money after we had done this!  She was $9 off her $30 for a couple of weeks when finally her younger sister got so tired of waiting for her to earn this money she kindly donated her portion of the recycling money towards the bike.

It was a very exciting day for ALL OF US on Saturday when she finally got to buy her bike.  We've all learned a lot from this, especially me, I don't think I'm as ready as I'd like to be for my kids to grow up & make the mistakes of life!