Dad gives 4yo son credit card and allowance; is furious wife lets him spend it all.
AITA for letting my 4 year old use all of his money to buy everybody else meals and gifts while we were at Disneyland?
I took my kids to Disneyland Paris for a week with two of my friends and their kids. My oldest is 4 but he gets a monthly allowance from his dad that he can, in theory, spend on whatever he wants. The allowance was my husband’s idea because I told him he was spoiling our son but I personally don’t think this is the best way to teach him about money.
While we were there my son kept wanting to use “his” card to pay for things and even though I tried to explain to him that his money would run out he kept insisting and saying it was okay. When his money ran out, he told my husband over facetime because he couldn’t get the toy he wanted.
My husband was really upset that I had let him use all of his money on other people, especially since he spent it on food. He told me that wasn’t what his allowance was for and didn’t want to listen when I told him he was the one who said our son could use that money on whatever he wanted.
He told me he was going to put more money on the card and was insisting I let our son buy the things he wanted and got angry when I pointed out giving him more money was defying the whole point, especially since I was planning to go back and get him the toy anyway.
Edit:
My son wasn't really upset over the toy, thankfully. He was distracted because he thought his card was broken and we needed to fix it. My husband was waaay more upset.
He's not my ex we're still married and he facetimed our kids every day.
Here's what people had to say:
Odd_Calligrapher_932 ays:
yta he’s 4… and sounds like a 4 year old with a good heart if he was wanting to buy everyone there things.. he isn’t old enough to even begin to understand concept of money. especially money on a dang card. if it was cash he could at least see the money and maybe be able to see “ahh i’m almost out of money.”
mickeys90 OP responds:
I wasn't punishing him. I was always going to buy him the toy he wanted. I only told him he couldn't get it at the time to see if he could understand what it meant when you used all of your money, even when you were doing nice things for other people.
I wanted to give him physical money and less of it but my husband insisted we try his idea first.
CalgaryChris77 says:
ESH how do two parents both not know that a 4 year is not capable of money management to this level... a lot of the adults I know aren't.
mickeys90 OP says:
I'm aware but my husband insisted this was a great idea so I agreed to let him try it.
F1tnessTacoInMyMouth says:
Good god. YTA.
He's 4. He barely knows how to wipe his a** correctly but he's able to 'insist' on spending money. This sounds like you have some aggression towards your husband, due to him giving him an allowance that you didn't want him to have, and you wanted to teach your husband a lesson.
If a 4 year old 'insists', you act like you swiped their card and then use your own. This is some of the dumbest shit I've read all day.