Make Money Fast!

Micah came downstairs this afternoon with about half of his life savings in his hand. He was a man on a mission. The mission? To find 50 cents so he'd have enough money to "Make Money Fast."

My dear, sweet, trusting, very naive son somehow wound up on eBay today. He said he typed "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" into Google and that's where he ended up. Highly likely. Anyway, while he was looking for his beloved Turtles an advertisement caught his eye. "Make Money Fast-Two Easy Ways." And that was all he needed to see.

Micah is a bit greedy. Well, maybe not greedy, but he definitely wants more. He has around $20 saved from his birthday and Christmas and he truly enjoys counting it and adding to it. It seemed perfectly logical to him to spend $12.50 on eBay to learn two easy ways to make more money. I'm sure he was even wondering to himself why his dad and I aren't using these Two Easy Ways. Oh, dear. If only it were that easy.

So, as you laugh at this cute story, imagine how difficult it was to explain to this very naive 8-year-old that this ad is a scam. It's not true. Sure, it'll give you ideas on how to make money (probably by selling porn or some really not nice email scam), but you should never have to spend money to get money. It sounds easy, but it really wasn't. In the end, I ended up calling his dad (who is on a work trip this week) and asking him to explain it. I don't know if he managed any better than I did, but we tried.

In the course of our conversation today I learned that my son has never purchased anything himself. He's never handed the cashier the money or bought anything on his own. So tomorrow afternoon we're going to rectify that. We're going to the store and he can pick out what he wants to buy and he can pay the cashier, too. With his money, of course. And, hopefully, we won't have him falling for anymore get rich quick schemes.

On a side note, I didn't think until right now to ask him how he planned to pay for his online purchase. I wonder if he thought he could put his dollars and change in the disk drive or what?!