Comments on: A Horse of a Different Color is Still a Horse

By: kosmo

kosmo — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:52:43 +0000

The iPod Shuffle is $49. Hopefully that’s what she’s getting. Still quite pricey for a 4 year old, but not $200+

By: Slinky

Slinky — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:11:08 +0000

She’s going to grow up to be one of those people who upgrade to the latest car every year. Yikes.

1. What the heck does a 4 year old need an iPod for anyway?
2. Way to teach her bad habits.
3. That’s an awful expensive Christmas present for anyone, let alone a 4 year old.

4. I’m such a hypocrite because I’m getting an iPod touch for Christmas from my fiancee. Of course, it’s replacing my 5 year old dead palm and the cd walkman I got when I was 12 or so. :)

By: kosmo

kosmo — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 14:06:59 +0000

I’m the kind of guy who insists on getting 120,000+ miles out of a car … definitely not the sort to replace a sofa group every year :)

A couple of years ago, my wife made some sort of comment about trading in one of our cars (a 1998 Contour). This is my commuter car (70 mile daily round trip), has “only” 97K miles on it (had even less back then), and runs great. Replacing it because just because it was made in a previous millenium seemed a bit silly.

(Our other car is a 2006, so it’s not as if we are driving two clunkers.)

By: Early Retirement Extreme

Early Retirement Extreme — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 01:40:46 +0000

I think grownups do it to their wallpaper and interior decorating as well. The craziest thing I heard was a radio commercial suggesting people to replace their entire sofa group because their guests had already seen the one from “last year”!

By: kosmo

kosmo — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 04:20:39 +0000

blink

are you ****ing kidding?

btw, the multi-colored cases immediately jumped into my head when I started reading this. Personally, I always think of my iPod as a blue iPod. It’s actually white, but has been in a blue case for years.

It’s mindboggling that a 4/5 year old could be getting gifts like this. Maybe it’s just my upbringing – my parents never had that sort of cash to spend on gifts (and yet I managed to turn out reasonably well).

By: Miss M

Miss M — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 15:13:37 +0000

Aww man, that story scared me. I can understand some irrationality towards kids and money, but that is way over the line. Like you said, there are cheaper ways to change the color. Next year purple will be out, it’s an endless cycle. Also it’s a bad example for this kid, I can’t imagine giving a 4 year old an ipod. I don’t even have one!

By: jim

jim — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 14:26:46 +0000

Ahhhh predictably irrational we are. :)

By: ChristianPF

ChristianPF — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:16:34 +0000

What if the horse is white, has a horn, and flies? Is it still a horse? ;)

It never ceases to amaze me how seemingly insignificant things can change large buying decisions…

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:51:10 +0000

fashion has no rationale to it, and let’s face it, these things have become synonymous with fashion as fashion accessories. people buy different earrings, so why not ipods?

By: Lori

Lori — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:11:25 +0000

Man oh man… this child is being set-up to fail in her own financial life as she gets older. No matter how much money the grandmother has, she should teach responsible spending to her granddaughter. That is a gift… one that lasts forever.

I’m shocked at how many parents/grandparents buy whatever the kid wants and then they are shocked when the kid grows up and completely melts down when others don’t do the same. See it a lot where I work as this new generation comes into the work force (I’m gen X). I almost feel bad for these people, as they were never taught differently and they are practically starting from scratch when they hit the real world.

By: Slacker

Slacker — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:31:16 +0000

My wife and I talk about how to teach kids the value of money, and little lessons such as this. Being the lazy guy that I am, I want to teach them in the easiest and most efficient way possible. The one consistent thing in my life I’ve learned is that the best way to learn a lesson is to experience it yourself. Therefore, if we force our kids to earn their money, even at the age of 4 by dressing themselves or behaving, (we can use representative things like paper clips) then they’ll probably not want to do silly things with their paper clips like waste 150 of them on a different color.

Also, yay first comment!

- Slacker
http://www.theslackermethod.com