How do you handle spending money?

[MickeyReeds]

Hi everyone--my dd (11) and ds (6) will be bring their own spending money to the world (first trip for all). I am looking for tips on how to handle this--should I carry the cash for them or can they pre load their keys to the world with their own money or should I charge it to the room and then have them settle up? What's worked for all of you? Any suggestions for how to keep track of what they've spent?

Thanks in advance!!

Diane

 

[eeyoremum]

I carry my kids money simply because we carry a backpack so everything is in it. I find if they use cash they can see how much they have left to spend. The difficult part is to hand over the money when I think they are spending thier money on something useless. We also try to make them wait until the end of the trip to spend because you never know what you will see at another park of downtown disney.

 

[CNDKangaroo]

I also carry the cash around for my children. They love handing "their" money over and I'm slowly learning to let go in terms of what they spend it on. I will make suggestions but this trip I will not say no to something that they want to buy...once there money is gone it is gone though.

 

[Whosemom]

We just got back. Our children are 12, 9, and 7. I just put a 3x5 card with each kids name and the amount they started with. I just paid for their stuff however I would pay for it myself and subtracted it off their total. It worked great. I figured it was kind of check book training, and they had to watch and double check me, and we called it their account. "What's left in my account, mommy?" I actually stopped giving them their allowance awhile before we left and started crediting their accounts.

We have issues with letting them waste it too. Actually, I'm all for them learning that lesson now, but DH constantly hounds them. My 7 year old actually held onto his money to the last day because that was MGM and he was dying to buy stuff at the star wars place. He was a hoot. He looked at many things, our constant refrain was "How much would I have left if I bought this?" LOL.

 

[DizzyErin]

I carry it in my bag but DD8 has it in her own wallet .. we divide what she has by the days we have so she has a budget each day that she can't go over ... if she doesn't spend her full amount i carry it over ... She absolutely loves this and last time she ended up with lots towards the end as she didn't want to spend it hahahaha and i ended up talking her into spending it!!! She saves all pocket money and we save spare change to save it up before we go .. it works well

 

[rt2dz]

This past trip my kids were given wallets (an early Christmas gift) and I had $25 worth of "Disney Dollars" I made on the computer. They then handed me their pretend Disney Dollars and I gave them real Disney Dollars. It made them feel very grown up, but I didn't have to worry about them losing the real thing. I had extra pretend dollars that they exchanged for any other money they wanted to spend while there.

 

[mumom95]

On our trip in November, my kids (ages 6 and 8) each had their own wallet that they kept the money that had been earning for the trip. But I held kept the wallets in my bagallini. When they wanted to buy something, I would hand them their wallet. After they paid for the item they would hand me back their wallet.

The funny thing about this is the day we were leaving, I was the one who left my wallet in our resort room. Luckily we went to DTD before the airport, so I noticed it then and had time to go back to the resort to get it. Maybe it would have been safer if the kids had been carrying the wallets instead of me