There are certain parenting moments that are just a trial by fire. And the most fiery trial of all? Teaching a teenager how to budget. One mom on Reddit just set up a perfect, real-world lesson for her three high schoolers, and one of them failed so spectacularly that he’s now learning the hard way about the price of an $8 bagel.
Our narrator is a mom who used to give her three kids $20 a week for lunch. It was enough, with some extra for snacks, and they all managed it just fine. They learned to make their money last. This is key: her kids, including the 16-year-old son, are not new to the concept of budgeting. They know how it works.
But then, the school had to go and “innovate.” They went all-digital, which meant Mom couldn’t just hand out $20 bills anymore. The new system, which she calls a “pain in the azz,” only allows large deposits. So, she did the big, responsible parent thing: she loaded each kid’s account with $1000.
One. Thousand. Dollars. She made it “very very clear” that this was not a teenage slush fund. This was their lunch money for the entire school year. At $20 a week, that’s a ton of extra cash built in, so they had a $200 buffer. This mom is organized, fair, and generous.
But this school, like so many, set a trap. That same magic ID card that buys a standard lunch also works on the expensive vending machines. And the school “cafe.” We’re talking $4 Pop-Tarts, $5 energy drinks, and… I am not making this up… $8 bagels. Eight. Dollars. For a piece of bread with a hole in it.
This is a temptation that few 16-year-olds are built to withstand. And this one? He didn’t even try.
You can guess what happened next. Mom got a notification from the school. Her 16-year-old’s account was not just empty. It was in the negative. He had apparently been skipping the snacks from home, treating himself to expensive cafe breakfasts, and mainlining vending machine junk. He had burned through an entire year’s worth of food money in… what, a few months?
He is now $50 in the hole and needs an extra $500 just to eat for the rest of the school year.
And here is where this mom wins the Parent of the Year award. She didn’t yell. She didn’t shame. She didn’t just sigh and refill the account, teaching him nothing. She gave him two, simple, perfect, real-world options:
- You can pay the $500 out of your own money.
- You can pack a lunch from home. Every. Single. Day.
And here’s the kicker! He chose to pay for it. Which means he has the money. He’s just “very unhappy” that he has to spend his fun money on the basic-survival money he already wasted. Oh, the injustice. The mom, being a boss, immediately transferred the cash from his account to the school’s. Lesson taught.
But the story isn’t over. Because now, her ex is “pissed” at her. Of course he is. Someone is actually holding their son accountable instead of just bailing him out. Her response to the ex? “I told them to pay for lunch themself if they have an issue with it.” A queen.
So, is she the ahole? Absolutely not. She’s the only one parenting. This is not a 6-year-old who doesn’t understand numbers. This is a 16-year-old who made a series of bad choices. He’s not starving. He has the option to pack a lunch. He just doesn’t want to. He’s learning a $500 lesson in budgeting that is, frankly, way cheaper than the lessons he’ll learn in college.
Marvelous lesson in budgeting