Are your spending habits rubbing off on your kids?

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I own a Coach purse. In fact, I own two—a handbag and a tote.

Now, unless you’re a purse aficionado, you wouldn’t recognize them as Coach bags because I chose not to buy any with the ‘C’ emblazoned on them. What you also wouldn’t know is that I bought them at the outlet mall at a half-price long weekend sale.

Despite the great prices, not only did I pay cash, I saved months for them. And months. The cash came from my leftover “fun” money.

But to make a long story short, my Coach purchases were not lost on my oldest daughter, who was shopping with me the weekend I bought one of the purses. As we approached the Coach store, she remarked, “Oooo, Mom, you’re buying a Coach purse.”

That made me pause. Here was my daughter, on the verge of her adolescent years, and not yet obsessed with having the “right” clothes and accessories, noticing that I was purposefully choosing a high-end brand. What kind of message was I sending her?

I tried to explain that I purposefully chose a good quality brand so that I didn’t have to buy a new purse in a very long time, and that I hardly ever buy purses to begin with. I also reminded her that I had saved for months and was paying cash (ah-ha, a lesson in credit card debt!).

I could tell she was still skeptical. She’s a smart, observant girl.

So we talked a bit about how we shop at all sorts of stores, as well as garage sales and second-hand stores from time-to-time, and reminded her how much I like buying items on sale, or getting freebies.

Still…

That message of consumerism, of chasing the “right” purse, seemed to linger, and I wondered what kind of lesson I had just taught her—or hadn’t.

Kim Dudra is a freelance copywriter based in Vancouver, B.C., and is the owner of re:fresh communications. She’s been known to juggle four kids’ schedules, three computers, two cats, and one cup of coffee, all at once. Kim is a featured writer for girlgetstrong.

Be Sociable, Share!

•