Little Spenders

Imagine if you gave two children £500. Then put Mum and Dad’s debit card in their hands and offer them a week in charge of household spending – what on earth would happen next?

Learning to use money early helps kids when they’re older

Through Barclays LifeSkills, we’re here to support parents and help kids build their Moneyverse for the first time. Our useful hints, tips and fun tools can help youngsters to understand and learn about money.

Meet the Bhakers

Sabella and Ravi Bhaker, a couple from Manchester, gamely took up our challenge to see how their whole family would fare with eight-year old daughter Sienna and six-year old son Reissio holding the purse strings.

"Amazing fun!" was the natural response from the children – cue wild supermarket scenes, trips to go-kart tracks, a spin in a Lamborghini and enough sugar to last a lifetime. 

But another reaction from Sienna and Reissio to the money was much more surprising: "Be careful and don’t go wild". Both kids began to look closely at prices and work out the value of what they bought. They also watched their budget like a hawk – and ended up with some money left on the last day to spoil their parents. 

We spoke to the Bhakers a week after the cameras left to find out how it went. Here are five memorable lessons from their experience…

1. Reissio: “We hired a blue Lamborghini, and Dad held a skunk.”

As expected, fun came first. Taking Mum and Dad’s bank card felt like a magical treat, and the children let their imagination run riot. 

From mini-golf to track racing, a spa and home visit from a petting zoo (rabbits, owls, skunks), the kids decided to spend a big chunk of the budget on entertainment for the family. 

Reissio says: “We got to go Dino-golfing, go-karting, had a petting zoo come to our house – where Dad held a skunk, and even went in a blue Lamborghini! It was fantastic, and my Dad went round the track with the owner.”

Sienna adds: “We were really nervous at the start, and I was also a bit shocked we’d be able to do it but was very happy because I knew Mum and Dad wouldn’t be able to have a say in what we bought or what we did. We could just choose, so even if Mum and Dad had to have McDonalds for dinner, they couldn’t say anything!”

Rather than the supercar being a personal indulgence though, the Lamborghini ride was actually a sisterly treat for Reissio. 

And Sabella was impressed with how Sienna got to grips with the budget to make sure the surprise car treat was affordable. 

“I was listening to Sienna talk to Reissio about the budget and could see that she was also thinking about the secret fast car experience for him. She was working out how to incorporate it into their spending but not tell him about it.”

2. Sienna: “I’d never let us get to day two and only have £10 left.”

Despite the trips and supercar experience, fears of a big budget blow-out proved unfounded, to Ravi and Sabella’s great surprise.

They noticed that Sienna and Reissio quickly picked up on money skills like budgeting and the need to keep enough money for the whole week – knowing if it all disappeared, there’d be no way to get any more.

Sienna says: “I would say to Reissio ‘We can have this, it isn’t too much money – and so we can have a lot of money left at the end of the week.’

I was kind of in charge of what to buy, what to do, what activities, and to see that if we got to day two and only had £10 left, I would never let that happen.”

In particular, Ravi was taken aback by how quickly they adapted to the implications of a budget. 

“I was genuinely surprised, I thought they were going to blow the whole budget on day one,” he says. 

“It was quite cool to see them start by going for the expensive approach, ‘let’s go all out!’ – buy what they want, not a care in the world – and then to gradually think, hold on, we’ve only got this much left. 

Sienna is just starting to touch on monetary value in school as well, and we like to teach her where we can, so she started to realise, ‘hold on, if we carry on like this, we’re really going to get to day three and we’re going to be out of budget’. It was really nice to see them actually think about that and for her to direct Reissio and say ‘look, we can’t get that but let’s do this’.”

3. Ravi: “The kids stayed true to our home values – it wasn’t like ‘let’s hire a private jet to Disneyland!’”

Our experiment also brought out another financial approach from Sienna and Reissio that their parents did not expect – a focus on keeping it close to family.

Ravi says: “The £500 was quite a lot of money for a child to have, and so I was very happy that they didn’t get carried away with it. They budgeted for a normal family life rather than going crazy.

They thought about home life. They stayed true to some of our home values – it wasn’t like ‘we’ve got the family budget, let’s go on a private jet to Disneyland’.”

Sabella adds: “Before they even thought of what to do with the money, they talked about our family activities – they wanted to incorporate that so everyone got to benefit from the money.

On the last day, they did a Bollywood theme night – our Fridays are cinema, movie, chill out, takeaway nights, where we watch films and put bhangra on. And it was so nice to see how they considered me and Ravi and include it as part of their weekend.”

4. Reissio: “With money, I learned that you’ve got to be careful – you can’t just go out and be wild.”

Even at such tender years, both children learned very quickly that the money needed to be looked after. As well as paying for big-ticket items like fancy trips and treats, it needed to cover off everyday expenses too.   

“I learned that you’ve got to be careful when buying, you can’t just go out and be wild and stuff – you need to think about food and petrol and things,” says Reissio.

Sienna adds: “I learned that some things can be very expensive and other things can be very cheap, and you need to be really careful of what you buy. So, in the supermarket, look if a bottle of juice costs £19 – you could get two massive cartons [of the same] for the same price.”

Ravi admits he was amazed to see them learn such an attitude at such a young age.

“I’m shocked and impressed! It’s been really amazing to see,” he says.

The weekly supermarket shop, though, did see them go to town – spending the best part of £40 on sugary treats including sweets, chocolates, snacks, cakes, cookie dough and ice-creams. “It was enough sugar to knock you out,” says Sienna.

5. Sabella: “This whole experience has taught the kids how to appreciate money.”

Both Ravi and Sabella have been quietly astonished by how swiftly the children began to think differently about money once they were in charge.

“It’s definitely had an impact” says Sabella. “After the filming, we popped into a homeware store where Reissio picked up a toy he wanted and then Sienna said ‘well he’s got that so I’d like this’.

But the toy she wanted was double the price of her brother’s, so she went off and thought about it. And she came back and chose something for the equivalent price – two bottles of paint and some nice paint brushes.

This whole experience has taught them about money and how to appreciate money because before, they’d walk into a shop and say ‘Can we have this? Can we have that?!’”