Description:
When my daughter was not understanding why we did not constantly have money for the extras, I sat down with her, and the money from our monopoly game. I gave her the average amount of money I earned at that time, in monopoly money. told her this is your income. Then, I proceeded to tell her to pay the rent, the phone bill, the water bill and so forth with each debt. Then I let her know she needed to go buy food. This actually showed her more specifically how the money was being spent, which helped her to understand it did not grow on trees. When she had about $5.00 left, I dropped the final bomb to reach understanding. You now have $5.00 for the rest of the month - do you have toilet paper? Soap? Shampoo? what about Gas for the car.
It did bring the point home real quick to be more responsible with money.