Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Twice in the past two weeks I have seen something that really made me scratch my head, and made me wonder exactly what parents think they are teaching their kids in terms of how money works and financial planning.

Two weeks ago I was at WalMart and saw that they had set up a Lottery Ticket booth (where the kids coin operated games had been), and I thought , at least they don’t have them at the check out, where it slows everything down. Then I noticed a family there (Mom, Dad and two kids younger than 10 years old), and the kids were asking their parents, “Can we scratch the card this time?”. Frankly my first that was WTF? What are these parents teaching these kids?

Fast forward to my trip to San Francisco and on the plane the family in front of me was another family (Mom, Dad, three kids under age of 10) and they were doing the same thing, and the kids were asking, “Can I play, can I scratch the tickets?”, again my gut reaction was WTF?

What exactly are these parents thinking getting their kids interested in playing lotteries for? To kids this is just a fun game to play, they don’t really understand how much money gets wasted on lotteries, they just think it is fun to scratch off tickets and how much fun their parents seem to be having with these games.

Why start teaching kids about this so young?

• If you really want to teach kids a lesson about lottery tickets, teach them about the chances of winning and play games with the numbers.
• Have them understand what the chances are at winning this “game of chance.”
• Explain to them where the money goes, but also explain that while the money does go to good things, it is your money, and you can donate to charities directly instead.

Am I missing something here? It is illegal for kids under the age of 18 to BUY lottery tickets, so why would you teach them to play them?