Loco Parentis: Hes Gotta Have It
HAVING A 15-YEAR-OLD son walking around with $300 is a scary, scary thing. He could buy drugs with that. He could buy a pit bull puppy with that. Or he could just buy a shitload of red licorice. I know he’s an impulse shopper. Among the purchases he’s brought home: a t-shirt that reads “IF YOU SEE DA’ POLICE, WARN A BROTHER” (he’s never actually put it on, thank God); a gimmicky TV remote the size of a sheet cake; Magic Crystal kits; a rubber chicken; eight million Pokémon cards; and a baby dragon from the Renaissance Faire. (It was actually an anole, and it lived for six years.)
I don’t want Jake to fritter away this money. And apparently, $300 is enough to make an impression even on him. “I need to open a bank account,” he tells me.
“Wow, Jake, what a great idea! A checking account?”
“No. They don’t pay interest.” Imagine him knowing that. “A savings account.”
“Okay. I’ll find out if there’s a minimum balance to start.”
So the next time I’m at the bank, I ask the teller: “By the way, what’s your minimum deposit for a savings account?”
“Four hundred dollars,” she tells me, and I nearly drop my handbag.
“Four hundred bucks?!”
“Yep. Average daily balance.”
There’s no way in hell Jake’s going to maintain a $400 balance. “Don’t you have some kind of starter account for kids?”
“Oh, a custodial account,” the teller says. “There’s no minimum for that. But your name has to be on it, too. How old is your child?”
“Fifteen.”
“Hmm. Yeah. Well, he can deposit money by himself, but he can’t make a withdrawal unless you sign for it.”
Perfect, I think, and hurry home to report to Jake. It takes me two minutes to explain what the teller told me, and two seconds for Jake to say “No” to a custodial account. “But you could make deposits on your own,” I point out.
“No. No way do I want an account where you have to okay when I take money out.”
“It’s your money. I don’t care how you spend it.” But that’s not true, and he knows it. Even if I didn’t argue with him over withdrawals, I’d surely ask what he wanted to buy. And that, alone, undercuts for him the sweet independence of having money of his own, money that he’s earned.
“I’ll wait until I have $400,” he says.
“It’s $400 minimum balance. You have to keep $400 in there all the time.”
“Then I’ll wait until I can.”
I want to argue it more, but he’s got his stubborn face on. And logically, I know that even if he blows all $300 on popcorn and movies, it shouldn’t matter to me, because it’s his to blow, fair and square. Somehow, though, I can’t get over his nouveau richness. Marcy’s babysitting earnings were never a subject of contention, because I didn’t need her lousy $32. But $300 would buy a screen door, or gutters for the porch, or half a tank of heating oil.
