Financial Friction Protocol: Teaching the Value of Scarcity in a Cashless World
The afternoon my fourteen-year-old daughter Chloe asked for her third online shopping transfer in a single week, claiming she 'absolutely needed' a designer hoodie she saw on social media, I realized our digital allowance system had backfired. Money had become completely abstract to her; it was a frictionless number on a screen that magically replenished whenever she asked. She had no concept of trade-offs or scarcity. I realized that by making money too easy to spend, we were failing to prepare her for the financial realities of independent living, where budgets have limits and overspending has serious consequences. ...