Having discovered, quite by chance, that our children were taking twice their allowance simply by playing off one parent against the other, my wife and I decided we would take turns doling out their pocket money. The alternate monthly rota suggested itself as the simplest way to monitor their spending, and we shook hands at having bested the petty larceny we had been subjected to over the years.
My wife decided to go first. At the start of the month, she called a family conference. “Business has not been doing well,” she delivered the grim news, “You guys will have to tighten your belts” — metaphorically, of course, since we don’t do a lot of belt-wearing in the family. The children came out looking doleful. “It’s the start of our vacations,” moaned my son. “I’ll have to live off my friends like a pauper,” sighed my daughter. “Psst,” I told them in a stage whisper, “I’ll pitch in with my bit, just don’t let your mom know,” transferring money surreptitiously into their accounts so they could get by on plastic.
Both had signed up for summer internship programmes, but it transpired that the clothes they owned — filling up several cupboards — weren’t adequate for their temporary working lives. I extended them additional credit. They weren’t used to public transport. I put them down for daily travel stipends. They needed supplementary talk time, restaurant allowances — they had to eat, innit? — and the occasional shopping binges with their new working friends so that they could fit in. That month, I actually bought myself a belt to practise a little tightening, and sighed in relief when April gave way to May and it was officially my turn to take on their grants.
My son said he was sorry but through oversight he’d credited his “saving” savings account with the money I’d given him, from which he never withdrew money (it was his emergency loot), so I’d have to match the sum, which I happily did, glad to know that he had a standby plan for when he quit college. My daughter said technically any money I put in her account was for impulse purchases, so I should still provide her with cash on a daily basis. I was glad I’d bought that belt.
My son said he needed something extra for a pair of shoes. “I thought your shoes had been sanctioned last month,” I hoped to make it clear that he was not to pull the wool over my eyes. “Last month, mom said I should pend all purchases till it was your turn to pay us our pocket money,” said my son. I learned, soon enough, that I had also to clear a host of other pendings from the previous month: My daughter’s contact lenses, their phone and Internet bills, IOUs signed at various neighbourhood stores, spa treatments, the driver’s overtime for when they went “clubbing”, a dress watch for my daughter and a matching one for her mother — “she insisted,” my wife said to me disinterestedly — shades for all three of them, the monthly gym package (that no one uses, but my son insists on paying anyway), and — oh the perfidy! — their toiletries covering the entire next month when these should have been under their mother’s guard.
“I don’t think the rotating system is working,” I complained to my wife, “I’m being taken advantage of.” “I second that,” my wife agreed readily enough, proposing a solution she said was more bankable. I am to continue to pay for everything while, she says, she will excuse me from the monthly supervisory and consultancy dues that, she believes, are hers — “legally”, she pointed out — so it’s all settled: the kids and she get to do the spending while I will get to do the paying.
