Thursday, May 8, 2008

Econ 101

This morning while getting ready for school Kendall, Rebecca and I had an interesting discussion on economics. Matthew had been up most the night working from home. Some of the things he does have to be done at their client's least busy times, which usually means about 3am. Well because he got to bed so late he wasn't going to be able to take the girls to the bus stop like he usually does. First they wanted to know if he was staying home the whole day. I said he'd probably go in to work after lunch. Then Rebecca wanted to know if he still got paid for the full day. I assured her he would because he could count the hours in the middle of the night he worked.

Then Kendall wanted asked what he did. They know one of his company's biggest clients are Hasbro Toys so I used them as the example. Telling them that if people wanted to buy toys that DH writes the programs so they can go to Hasbro's website to buy stuff (actually DH doesn't do this for Hasbro but it was more for illustration purposes and I knew that would sound cooler than saying he wrote programs for the American Medical Association). I explained that people picked the items they wanted out online, paid with a credit card and then the people at daddy's office shipped the items to the customer. Thanks to Webkinz they seemed pretty familiar with the concept of an online shopping cart. Then Kendall's eyes lit up and said, "So the more things people buy, the more money daddy makes." I didn't have the heart to tell her that the more things people buy the more money daddy's company makes. Rebecca wanted to know if all the money went to the toy store or if the credit card company got any of it. I explained that the toy company probably paid the credit card company a small fee, like around $3 for every $100. Then Rebecca began to explain to Kendall that they take the money from your credit card but you have to pay the credit card for it and if you didn't pay for it all one time you'd have to pay EXTRA.

I tell you it was conversation to make their frugal mother proud. Next thing I know they'll be asking about 401Ks and mutual funds.

2 comments:

Michael Taylor said...

Looks like the have q better understanding of how credit works than most folks in my office.

Victoria said...

Warren Buffett will be needing someone to replace him and it sounds like you are grooming some good options. :)