Financial Responsibility Fairy

One day Allison, while combing her balding Barbie's hair and carefully rearranging her hand-me-down Barbie streetwalker fashion outfit, said to me, "I wish I had fairy wings."  Standard 5 y/o girl comment, very cute, aaaw, how sweet, blah blah blah. Then she goes, "I'd fly to Trader Joe's and then I'd fly to the bank and pay some bills."

Mom!  It's not a Dunce Cap!  It's a Gnome Hat!
I made it at Fairy Camp!
(Ok, sweetie.  It looks like a Dunce Cap though.
Are you planning to wear it through dinner?)

Real Barbie Housewives of Allison's Place

That got my attention. I had been kind of worrying about letting her indulge in all the pink tutu fairy Barbie glitter sparkle vomit stuff, but also didn't see a good way around it.  My hope was that if I let her do the princess dress-up stuff while she was 4, she eventually would think of it as stuff she did as a baby 4 year old, and be less interested in it.  In my fantasy world, it would all be phased out and fascination with science, math, geography, and other nice, safe, interests. I realize that our Disney friends Britney and Lindsay started out princess glitter and went in a slightly different direction, but that was not my plan.  My plan is to tell any prospective boyfriend that her eczema is actually leprosy and that if he tries to touch her, his penis will likely fall off. She might hate me, but I've heard this happens anyway shortly after they hit double digits, so I figure I have nothing to lose.

Actually, so far I think we must be doing okay. I'm less worried about the inundation of fairy books now that I realize she's apparently been reading about how Financial Responsibility Fairy bests the Compounded Interest Imp in the Financial Section of the Happy Wall Street Meadow Journal.  Credit Card Debt Fairy and Foreclosure Fairy have valuable lessons to teach our young girls. Although truth be told, Streetwalker Barbie has a few valuable life lessons herself.

I'm sure it helps to have a big brother who maybe takes his Scottish-Chinese penny pinching ancestry a little too seriously.  We recently started giving Allison an allowance, which is 50 cents a week. She put her first two quarters on the counter, mainly because she wasn't thinking about it, and her piggy bank was upstairs. Her big brother started yelling and I mean YELLING at her.  I almost intervened, except that quite frankly, I was a little terrified of his bleak message:

YOU CAN'T JUST LEAVE YOUR MONEY LAYING ON THE COUNTER!  IF YOU DON'T SAVE YOUR ALLOWANCE, YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY FOR COLLEGE, AND THEN YOU MIGHT NOT GET A GOOD JOB, AND THEN YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PAY FOR THINGS LIKE CLOTHES, FOOD, AND ELECTRICITY FOR YOUR HOUSE.  YOU NEED TO PUT YOUR MONEY IN A SAFE PLACE!!!

He's got a point.  We do have a lot of kids to send to college.

Eyes wide, and slightly teary, she scrambled upstairs to dutifully put her quarters away in her pink sparkle glitter piggy bank. If she's anything like her brother, she'll soon have enough saved up to chip in a few cents toward her share of the electricity that's powering her nighttime fairy reading light.

Tractor Fairy enjoying the county fair.