“I’ve heard stories of kids getting $100 bills for their first tooth.”
~ Ron Lieber, New York Times Personal Finance Columnist
WTF?! That’s short for What The Fairy?! :-)
You have to wonder what’s going through the minds of parents when they drop that kind of cash on a young kid.
Of course, leaving some cash under the pillow in exchange for a tooth is a time-honored parenting tradition. And, it’s natural for parents to be curious about what the going rate is.
But, as in all matters money, don’t fall prey to the “keeping up with the Joneses” syndrome. That’s not a financial habit you want to be passing along to your kids — not even indirectly via the Tooth Fairy. And, as Erma Bombeck quipped: “Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.”
Besides, the tooth fairy is about magic, not money. So dial back the dollars and dial up the creativity.
There are some wonderfully creative ideas in Joanna Goddard’s post: Tooth Fairy: What’s the Going Rate? I love the origami dollars, foreign money, rhyming poems, and notes written backwards. There are even more ideas in Chapter 5 of Ron Lieber’s book, The Opposite of Spoiled.
Now go be a WTF.
That’s short for Wonderful Tooth Fairy.
Get tomorrow’s tip here.
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