Garage Sale and a Business Lesson

We had a garage sale a week ago. My friend, Quotesy, and I decided to teach our children a little business lesson while we were at it.

All of our children come to us every now and then with money-making ideas. The problem with their ideas is that they always involve some sort of up front costs. And the problem with that is that our children are clueless about this and think that things just drop out of the sky.

So we, in our parenting wisdom, offered to let our children have a drink stand at said garage sale. They, of course, agreed immediately.

We then told them that they would have to purchase all needed items, including ice and posterboard, themselves. They, still, agreed immediately.

Each child ended up contributing a little over six dollars. Luckily, they made enough for each child to recoup six dollars. We were not at all worried about this. The lesson we wanted to teach wasn't how to make lots of money. We wanted our children to start to understand that it's not easy to make money. Many times we put in alot of effort and receive little in return.

And that's ok.

They also learned about buying something and selling it for a profit, advertising, working harder when things aren't going smoothly (they actually took the drinks door to door after the garage sale) and how hard Dad must work to provide for us.

We were pleased with their effort.

And their willingness to learn.


Bridget