Could you allow your teen to go without lunches if he bought these?

I would not give him more money and tell him to make and bring his own lunches. It’s his fault for blowing $250 on a freaking pair of headphones. How much better can they sound than from a $10 pair?

A 13 year old should never be given this kind of money. As you can see, he did pay for half his school lunches and blew the other half.

If you are responsible for this child and his money, then you will have to replace it or you are going to have to explain what happened to the other 50%.

Being a responsible parent is much more than just a roof over your childs head and food on the table.

Teaching them responsibilities is part of good parenting.

I would tell Jethro to eat his headphones.;)

Well he did buy school lunches with half of it so that is part of it so he did what was stipulated with the money. You can’t hold that against him, its now up to you what was your agreement with the teen as far as you providing lunches for them? Did you agree to buy there lunches?? If so then I would give them money each day to buy lunch, no more lump sum payouts though.

I don’t think I would let my teen walk around with $500, it would go in the bank for smaller withdrawals to be made but that would be just me trying to teach my child how to save for a rainy day.

Honestly it is my responsibility to feed my 13 year-old son so I would not make a deal such as that. If someone else made this sort of offer I would politely explain this to them and ask that they decrease their generous offer by the cost of the lunches.

I agree with @SuperMouse. It’s my responsibility to pay for my child’s lunches. I personally would not want anyone giving my child a gift with stipulations that it had to go toward their lunches since that is my responsibility and my concern, not theirs. I definitely would not let my child go without lunch because they chose to spend their money (that was a gift) on something they wanted.

I agree with @creative1 and @SuperMouse. Too much money for a 13 year old to budget with. Sounds like he did what he was told to do. Use half for lunch and the other half for himself. I would not punish the child.

I’d let him keep the headphones, and i’d let him go hungry. Let him have the exact same consequences as any adult who does the same.

Let him go hungry for a week or two this time, so that he learns and does not go hungry once you are dead and he has to pay his own rent and food every day.

Once he has passed out a couple of times from the hunger, tell him to go sell the headphones for $100 so he can buy lunch.

Sure, it’s not nice to do something like this to a kid, but the world is a harsh place, homeless people die every day from cold and starvation and other causes all over the world, don’t let him wind up as one of them.

Cruel to be kind.

EDIT: it’s important to learn “my money my choice” allong side “my actions my consequence”.

Having agreed to the deal and having the child blow it, I would agree with @erichw1504 that he has to bring lunch from home (you will supply lunch makings that he likes as part of your usual grocery shopping).

I would also tell him that from now on and until he shows he can responsibly use his money, any large monetary gifts will go in his bank account and any major purchases must be approved beforehand by you.

If you bail him out of this, all he will learn is “when there are problems, dont worry, cause something will happen to help me out”.

It’s very important to discourage that kind of mentality. If you give him money, or even just food to take from home, he will not realize the consequence of his decision.

You know the saying, it takes one to know one. Well, I am one. I moved out of home when I was 15 years old, I had to learn a few lessons the hard way. One time I spent money I should have not spent. Well, more than one time, but this particular time I ended up in a bad way. I had to steal a brick of cheese to stop my stomach from trying to eat it’s self. Since this happened to me, I have not missed one single rent payment, gas bill, electrical bill or other expense.

@marinelife any major purchases must be approved by me if I never gave the $500?

I’m curious why anyone would let the child go without lunches when the deal was “he was expected to buy his lunches with it and anything else he wanted.”. Nothing in that said that all $500 had to go toward his lunches or that he needed to budget enough of the money to buy a particular number of lunches. He spent some on lunches and some on what he wanted. Why does he deserve any type of punishment from that?

If the directions he was given with the money were as badly worded as you present: “to buy his lunches with it and anything else he wanted” and later “that he had to buy school lunches with part of it” then I’d say he completely lived up to his part of this stupid deal, and should be congratulated and told to plan to attend law school.

If you give bad directions, you shouldn’t blame the person when they are carried out to the letter. He apparently did use part of his money to buy lunches, and used the other part for the “anything else he wanted”. Kudos to him. Back to grammar school for whoever gave such ambiguous direction (and so much money) to a child.

@Seaofclouds I agree. I’d be happy I saved $250 for the year. and I would ask to borrow the headphones now and then ;)

@jonsblond Me too!

Middle ground: let him do chores for lunch money. Next time you could be more articulate about the contract.

If you let your child go hungry, he will not forget about it.

@WasCy GA and a huge LOL

@longtresses I’m innocent. I didn’t say a thing .

I would give my child the opportunity to earn some extra cash with a few odd jobs around the house. There’s always yard work to be done!

A 13 year old gets money as a gift or windfall and he has to buy his own lunches? I completely disagree with that from the beginning. At 13 I think his parents should be feeding the child. Any money the kid receives is for savings and maybe a special something he wants to spend it on, hopefully with some wise words and direction from the parents. The only exception I can see is if they are from a culture where money is treated as family money and there is an expectation that children contribute to household expenses, or if the family is extremely poor. But, if they are very poor I hope it is not normal to spend $250 on headphones!

Hypothetically, let’s say a thirteen year old boy came into $500 and he was expected to buy his lunches with it and anything else he wanted

And make sure your kid eats. Period.

Did the parents intend it to be an exercise for the 13 year old to figure out how much money he would need to buy lunches the rest of the year, and then he could spend what is leftover? Some sort of miscommunication? Still, I am not happy at all he had to use his windfall for lunches.

Have him make and take his own lunch. If he blew his lunch money on something else, that’s his fault. If he doesn’t want to take his lunch, then that’s his choice to go hungry. You’re doing him a disservice if you bail him out by giving him more money. Period.

I’d feed the kid but share my disappointment he didn’t uphold his end of the acceptance by buying all his lunches. I’d tell my kid the gift giver would be disappointed too he’d shown he wasn’t yet responsible with money. After that we’d sit down and make a budget of what upkeep is regular for a 13yr old and what things over time are expected to move to the side of the 13yr old’s responsibility.

Lucy, I agree with you 100%. Get a hack saw and carve his headphones into 30 little pieces. One for each day of the moth. Add a little WD40 to help wash it down.

@john65pennington Hi,John!:)

I think the kid did exactly what he was told to do. Unfortunately you, as the parent, did not sit down with him and help him budget out what he would need (exactly) for his lunch money. You guys should have figured out exactly how much money he would need for each day’s lunch and then total that up for the year (or however long that was supposed to stretch for) if there was any money left over, then your kid could have set the extra money aside to use for something he wanted. If there wasn’t any money left over, then he wouldn’t get to buy anything else.

You should either pay for the rest of his lunches at school, or you should teach your kid how to make a few basics, like PB&J sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, throw in some sliced veggies like carrots and celery and a piece of fruit and a carton of milk or a box of juice. Why does he have to buy his lunches at school? I never did, not even once.

I am not his parent. Did you see “hypothetically” in my question? I had nothing to do with this
at all @Kardamom .

It has nothing to do with the headphones or what he bought.
Too much money to leave in the hands of a 13 yr old with discretionary spending as any part of it.

@blueiiznh I agree.

@Aster My mistake. Then the “hypothetical parents” screwed up. The rest of my answer stands.

I’m a little unclear on why you would just make up a hypothetical situation like this. Or do you mean that this situation actually happened, but to someone else? In that case, it isn’t hypothetical.

sorry; not awake all day and I didn’t mean hypothetical . That was the wrong term. I certainly would not give $500 to a teenager all at once.

@blueiiznh I disagree. At 13 I had $500 in the bank, I would guess my niece and nephew had much more than that. Unless they were spending every cent they ever got for christmas and birthdays. At 14 I was working already, and managing that money.

@JLeslie thats wonderful but I would not give $500 to a thirteen year old all at once , in cash, kept in the house. To put into a bank account I’d consider it. Some kids are very thrifty and don’t like to spend their money. Others ? Burns a hole in their pocket.

@Aster I am sure every kid is different. I don’t think I ever spent one penny of gift money when I was a child. I put everything in the bank.

Good for you.

@Aster Not because I am so great, if that is what your answer implies. Because my parents paid for what I needed, they never expected me to buy anything with that money, that is my point. I wasn’t allowed to buy things my parents thought were too extravagant, not even with my own money, especially at 13. When I was an older teen I did spend money I had earned on clothes and some other things, but pretty much my parents supported me financially when I was still a child in their home, especially food.

@JLeslie That was my experience too. Any money that I recieved as a gift, was put right into the bank. My parents paid for my food and clothing, and occasionally gave me some money for candy or the movies. I didn’t have extravagant tastes in anything, so I never asked for those kinds of things. I got neat things for my birthday and Christmas though. I would have never have occurred to me to go out and spend more than a couple of dollars.

For that matter my parents rarely spent money without a lot of thought amd consideration, so I think I just felt the same expectation from them and for myself. If the child spent $250 on headphones, my next question would be, do the parents spend high amounts of money on similar things? I know too many parents who question the spending habits of their children and don’t question their own spending habits.

I remember once my girlfriend telling me about how she had just lectured her son about buying popcorn, candy and soda at the movie theatre, how he can’t afford something so extravagant, and he is wasting his money. I asked her, “do you get popcorn when you go to the movie?” She said, “yes, but I have the money to spend.” I see it completely differently than she does.

” I know too many parents who question the spending habits of their children and don’t question their own spending habits.” I think it is not abnormal for a woman to spend, say, $150 on a coat but not let her child do it. I think it is common for parents to go out for dinner and have lobster and steak but refuse to pay for a thirteen year old to have lobster and steak. This is along the same vein of parents who spend a fortune on a car but buy their kid a cheap, old car. Or pay cash for a very nice home while only lending their child enough for the down paymen on the child’s first house.
I never compared , when I was growing up, what I had to what my parents had whether I was lving in a “model home” or a mobile home. I took it for granted that my mother had some expensive clothing while I did not. It was never an issue. I didn’t think about it nor discuss it.
I hope you all enjoy chewing on this information! lol on to other posts.

There is certainly more to the story that we don’t know. I read it as it having been something that was done by the young teen behind the parents back. In that regard it proved to me that they were not mature enough to be open about their spending. To me it also indicated that they have not been educated on finacial responsibility.
The fact that a non parent was providing monies for school lunches indicates a bit more going on that the simple fact of where or how the money was spent.
Maybe I am reading more into it, but its all I have to go on to form my opinion.

@aster The movie example to me is about value. For me, no matter how much money I make, I am not going to spend $3 on a $1 box of candy, I just cannot handle such an unjust price. True, I would buy myself a more expensive car than my child possibly, but the process about what to buy, evaluating what makes sense would be the same. It is about the process, how someone spends money, and how they decide to spend their money. If you have seen me on other Q’s you probably know I have some pretty fancy cars in my garage, because of my husband’s car obsession. But, my kids would know we waited until our late 30’s to buy these cars, and only bought them when we could afford them. That when we were younger we drove Miatas and Civics, and very moderate cars and that is how we could afford the Porsches in my garage later. My child getting a Honda when I have Porshes is the same as me, because at their age I had the Honda too. I think we are agreeing there sort of. For whatever reason, the movie popcorn is different to me than the car, I guess I just have a thing about the movie popcorn, maybe it is illogical.

I would buy my child lobster the same I would myself, I would not have my children eat cheaper food if they were at the restaurant with me, not a 13 year old anyway. Most likely they aren’t at the restaurant with $50 lobster. Although, I have taken my niece and nephew for steak while they were teens, and that was not cheap for sure, I didn’t tell them what they could order. What am I going to say, you can only order chicken or salad?

I disagree about the coat too. When I buy a coat I try to get it on sale, I would buy a teen child the same coat I buy myself. The difference being the child probably as one coat for the winter, while adults might have more of an assortment, simply because we don’t grow out of them.

Disclaimer: I don’t have any kids, this is what I suppose I would based onhow I was raised and how I treat money.

@blueiiznh Oh, so you perceived it as the money was specifically given for school lunches. I had not read it that way. Interesting,

@jleslie. No I did read that. There were just too many other things in there that formed my opinion.