Guest contributor

I grew up in a retail family in the Midwest – my dad opened a men’s clothing store and, over the years, it grew into a respected and profitable business with off-shoot stores. My hardworking parents made sure that I knew the value of a dollar. I earned an allowance, put away savings toward my college education, and worked during summers to help with school expenses. 

Teaching kids the value of a dollar and of economizing seems more difficult today than it did then. My daughter comes home from middle school with reports of her fellow students’ latest technology purchases – a $150 ipod or a state-of-the-art cell phone. Kids are running around in Abercrombie, American Eagle and Aeropostale – all “A-list” brands for sure, when you check out the price tags. To hear the latest news from the youngest generation, you would think the economic crisis was a figment of our imagination, except that so many of us are victims of it. 

Our 11-year-old daughter has learned some valuable lessons in economics, thanks to my recent unemployment. We are careful to reassure her that Mom’s situation is temporary and not cause for alarm, but she can see that “economy” for us has become a “reality show” in the truest sense of that genre. We are fortunate not to be struggling with foreclosure or wondering how to pay the grocery bills, as many in our country are, but our daughter Cassie has seen us rein in our spending and make sacrifices.Cassie has never been materialistic or demanding, and she rarely asks for the latest middle school accessory. That is why, when she discovered that many students at her school had an ipod Nano (a high-tech, portable video and music player), she knew that she would have to work and save money to buy one. But Cassie took the lesson a step further: She decided to do some product research and shop online for the best deal she could find.

After days of shopping Web sites, Cassie located an ipod knock-off that appeared to do everything the original product could do, at a quarter of the ipod’s price. (She could even get it in a cool color – very important to the middle school crowd!) We called the company, placed the order, and took $35 of her hard-earned money to the bank for a cashier’s check. Cassie was thrilled that, not only would she have an ipod facsimile like her friends’, but she bought it with her own money! The music player came, and she could hardly wait to download her favorite tunes onto it and take it to school to show her friends. 

Unfortunately, Cassie had to learn another valuable lesson – “You often get what you pay for.” The knockoff was impossible to program with music. It kept “dying” just a few minutes after being re-charged. It was a dud. We are returning it to the distributor and hope to receive a refund.

Luckily Cassie’s birthday is around the corner, and with the refund check, a few more weeks of allowance for doing her chores, and a little help from us, she will have a real ipod for her birthday. We hope the lessons learned from this experience will benefit our daughter for a lifetime, and that she has learned the true value of the dollar that we all work so hard to earn.

Gup-Mathews invites readers to send thoughts regarding unemployment to her at “The Write Impression” at www.writeimpressionmaine.com.