A valuable lesson learned

Since Jamie was about 4yrs old we have been giving him an allowance. It has cut down a lot on the "gimmes". When we are in a store shopping and he sees something he wants he has the choice of putting it on his Birthday/Christmas wish list or purchasing it himself out of his allowance. He is now old enough to be able to save up a bit rather than spending it on junk food on every grocery shopping trip. Recently he learned another valuable lesson. He still sometimes get the urge to "buy something, anything!" when we are out. He simply had to have one of these. I tried to tell him that it would only be fun for about 15 minutes, and that $20 was a lot of money for a piece of plastic, but he insisted that he really, really wanted it. He had enough in his allowance money, so he made the choice. Sure enough, not more than a day later, he wanted to return it to the store and save his money for something else. Unfortunately, he had ripped open the box it had come in and as it was no longer resaleable he was out of luck. The lesson learned - choose carefully, give yourself a cooling off period. Hopefully he will remember this lesson in years to come when purchases are even bigger than $20.