Running Out Of Money

My mother picked my son up after school today to go to the mall.  My children love going to the mall with my mother.   They each do different things with her while there're there.  My daughter is eight, but she still likes to ride the little quarter rides.   They both like to eat with her in the food court and then they each have different things they like to buy.

My daughter typically comes home with a bag of candy from the store where you select candy from rows and rows of bins and pay by weight.  She eats some of the candy there, brings a piece or so home for her brother, father or me and then promptly forgets about it the next day.   She comes back to it later after I've put it in the candy bowl hidden up high, remembering every single piece she bought.

My son likes to buy a Lego set.   Something not too big, although he convinced Mimi to get him a pretty big one one time.   He loves Legos, only lately he's been into different things.  Today he came home with some Pokemon cards.   Tonight he has covered our entire island and the bar with cards in a grid pattern, separated by importance or category or color or something he deemed important.

My mother told me about a conversation she had with him on the way to the mall today.   She picked him up from school and he asked her, "Mimi, what do retired people do when they have no money?"  She wasn't sure where my son was coming from with this question so she said, "There are a lot of things they can do, first of all, they can get a job.  They could also sell some things."  My son was concerned they might sell their red truck.   He was referring to my father's "Lowes Mobile," an old Jeep he's had for a long time.  She told him she didn't think they would sell it.

My son then said, "or they could go bankrupt," referring to what retired people could do when they ran our of money.   My mother didn't know where he heard about bankruptcy but she talked to him about how retired people usually had prepared for retirement with investments or retirement plans from their jobs or the government also had something called Social Security that gave retired people money after many years of paying taxes.  

My mother said she and Gramps had prepared for retirement and would not be going bankrupt and did that help with his question?  That seemed to be what my son was looking for.   I'm glad the youngest generation in our family is thinking about the financial security of his elders.

The Big Boy Update:  After the bankruptcy and retirement conversation in the car with my mother today, my son asked her if she'd heard about the basketball player who had died.   My mother said she did.   She said my son was an interesting conversationalist.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter was up at four-something-AM this morning.   Her brother was up too.  I. have no idea why, but they were making a great racket.   She fell asleep early tonight as a result.  I'm hoping we don't have another super early night/morning for tomorrow.