by Scott Pape
It’s party time!
Let your teenager know that for the next Money Meal they’ll be hosting a dinner party . . . so they’re in charge.
(If you have more than one teen, they should each host their own party over the coming months. And if you have younger kids, it’s your call whether to do this now or postpone it for a few years.)
Tell them you’ll give them a $30 budget for the shop (adjust up or down if you need to).
Then they’ll be running the show from start to finish:
•They’ll decide who they want to invite (grandparents are great for this, but if that doesn’t work, feel free to invite relatives, family friends, or even their own friends).
•They’ll check the pantry and prepare a shopping list.
•They’ll go shopping for what they need for the meal (get them to keep their receipt for later, you’ll need it).
•And finally, they’ll prepare, cook and serve the meal!
This real-world experience is going to teach them how expensive running a family is, how much work is required in putting on a nightly meal and, most importantly, why you lose your mind when your kids thumb their noses at what you’ve cooked.
When the dinner party rolls around, you get to kick back and relax—your teen’s running the show. (Though you’ll probably have to be on hand for advice, and be ready with the fire extinguisher.)
Then—and this is the key point—after dinner, while everyone is still around the table, you’re going to pull out the receipt from your teen’s shopping trip, and proudly announce that they’ve just fed the entire family for under $30—whereas the same meal as a takeaway would have cost you $120 or more.
The genuine, heartfelt praise and applause from guests will leave a lasting impression on your teen’s brain—and you can guarantee they’ll remember this lesson for the rest of their lives.
Money Meal ‘shopping list’
•Photocopies of the recipes.
•$30 in notes (or whatever budget you decide on).
•Teens will need to shop for their meal this week, so depending on how old they are, you may need to accompany them, or at least drive them.
If you’re doing this with tweens or younger kids, you can have some fun shopping:
•Play ‘where’s the milk?’ (Supermarkets always make you walk to the back of the store to get milk, in the hope you’ll be tempted to buy more as you go through the aisles.)
•Challenge them to find the cheapest product by comparing the unit price (per 100 grams)—but also take the opportunity to explain why sometimes you might pay more for some things, like free-range eggs.
•Point out that the most expensive things tend to be stacked at eye level, so people will spend more.
•When you get home, grab a tea towel and do a blind taste test of generic versus brand-name products. (Liz and I have done a blind taste test between artisanal pooped-out-of-a-civet-cat coffee beans and Aldi coffee beans—at a third of the price. Aldi won.)
Once your shopping is done, it’s time for your Money Meal—the Grandparents’ Dinner Party.
BAREFOOT MONEY MEAL
THE GRANDPARENTS’ DINNER PARTY
Dinner parties are a lot of fun . . . especially when you don’t have to cook! Okay, so with tweens you’ll definitely be controlling the cooking, and with the older ones you’ll probably be supervising. (Still, you can do it with a wine in your hand.)
ENTRÉE:
Have the ‘chef’ set the table, and suggest they go a little fancy: put on a tablecloth, light some candles, use the posh cutlery, write place cards for seating, and play some background music.
When the grandparents arrive, get them to play the Family Legends game:
Do you know . . .
•where Grandma and Grandpa were born?
•how much they paid for groceries in their day?
•what your parents were like when they were your age?
MAIN COURSE:
Teens serve their signature dish. (And even if the food is what Gordon Ramsay would describe as ‘dog s***’, your dinner guests will be very supportive of their first attempts at cooking.) Remember to take photos!
Congratulate the chef on feeding so many people for under $30 . . . then do a comparison. How much would the bill be if they were in a restaurant, or calling Uber Eats? $100? $150?
Remind them that they could freeze these meals, and be eating them quicker than a Deliveroo could pedal their treadly to your door, for $5 a serve.
Get everyone to applaud.
DESSERT:
Do payday, and have the kids explain to your guests how payday works.
Then, everyone pitches in and does the dishes.
Now you’re cooking!
Congratulations.
For all the thousands of monotonous meals you’ve had as a family, this evening will burn brightly in your memory, and your kids’ memories.
(That’s why you want to get plenty of pictures, because years from now you’ll look back on this night and smile.)
Yes, there’s something satisfying in teaching your kids an important life skill.
However, the parents who have done the Grandparents’ Dinner Party tell me it’s also a night when they feel connected as a family, and as your kids get older and more independent that’s something you should celebrate.
What’s more, you’ll have taught your teen a lasting lesson about the true cost of eating out (or ordering in) . . . and the power of being able to whip up a tasty, nutritious meal on the cheap.
The more your kids cook, the better they’ll get, so they should practise their newfound culinary skills by feeding the family at least once a month!
Next Money Meal we’re going to switch gears. If you’ve got a bratty kid, or you’re at risk of having one, I’m going to show you exactly what to do to ‘break the brat’!
‘It was such a success, we’re going to do it on a regular basis!’
Nicole and Malcolm Harris, Wantirna, VIC
Family mealtimes were becoming a real struggle.
We have four kids, aged 11 to 17, and it can be hard to please everyone. They often complain about what is being served and have an entitlement attitude to family dinners—an expectation that someone will cook for them.
I told the kids things were going to change and they had to cook for us. I was worried they would fight about it and I would have to nag them.
Sure enough, when reading the recipe they did complain about the ingredients. And they were reluctant to go shopping at first—to be honest, they would rather play video games!
But in the end they enjoyed it because they were in control. And when it came time to eat, I was surprised to find they ate every last bit of the meal and actually enjoyed it. I think they appreciated the meal more because they were the ones who had cooked it. That was a real eye-opener for me!
I was surprised by how easy the whole process was—my youngest timed how long it took them to cook the meal and it was only 30 minutes. They didn’t argue while shopping or cooking—they worked beautifully as a team. I’m a very proud parent.
The grandparents were so delighted to get an invitation to dinner and loved watching the kids work as a team to prepare a meal for them. The whole night was one we will all cherish and remember.
In fact, it was such a success, we’re going to do it on a regular basis. I’m going to start a roster and teach them a handful of recipes so they’re prepared for when they leave home!
Breaking the Brat
Do you remember when you were a kid, there were always those World Vision ads on telly that implored you to sponsor a kid in Africa?
Of course World Vision do amazing work, with some of the world’s poorest kids, and I hold them in the highest regard. However, back in the eighties I just couldn’t connect with the picture of a hungry African kid on the other side of the world taped to the fridge . . . while I stuffed my face with Cheezels.
Regardless, that didn’t stop parents trying to s
hame their kids when they didn’t eat their dinner:
‘Little Makalo would love to eat your tuna casserole!’
Here’s the point: it’s bloody hard to get our kids to realise just how good they’ve got it, right?
After all, we’re not only living through the wealthiest time in human history, we’re living in one of the richest countries on earth.
Compared to our great-grandparents’ lives, we’re all Jay-Z and Beyoncé.
Yet after many years of thinking about it, I’ve worked out how to ‘break the brat’.
This is a practical, hands-on guide to one of the most memorable challenges of the Barefoot Ten: ‘Before your child leaves home, they should have volunteered in their local community’.
I’ll show you how to create an instant ‘family legend’ that your kids will remember at your funeral.
And you’ll also discover how to get your kids to appreciate how good they have it . . . in just one Money Meal.
Let’s get started.
We Are the World
When I was growing up in the eighties, the biggest popstars on the planet came together to raise money for Africa with the song ‘We Are the World’.
You should watch it on YouTube, it’s very . . . eighties.
There’s Jacko in sunglasses and sparkly socks, throwing shade at Diana Ross, who spontaneously tries to kiss him.
(Didn’t she know?)
There are some big egos in the room: Lionel Richie, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen (who, legend has it, had been on the squirt with Willie Nelson the night before), Cyndi Lauper and Tina Turner. (No Prince though—he turned it down because he thought it was a terrible song, regardless of the fact that it was for charity.)
All the stars get to sing one line. So they murder their lyrics, adding some ‘yeaaah . . . yeah . . . yeahs’ to steal a few more seconds of air time. The song goes for seven freaking minutes.
© Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
As a song, it was a big hit.
Heck, I put the song on and tried to do the moonwalk on the vinyl floor while my sister cheered me on.
Yet did we learn that we were the world, the kids who make a brighter day . . . and start giving?
Nah.
If you really want to raise generous, grateful kids, a song won’t do it.
You need to get their hands dirty.
Yet that was a lesson I wouldn’t end up learning for real until nearly a decade after ‘We Are the World’, when a chance meeting changed my life.
The experience of a lifetime
My teenage years weren’t my happiest.
Like most teenagers, the world revolved around me and my problems, and the injustice of how hard my life was. (I discovered girls, though they didn’t discover me till many, many years later.)
One day my English teacher, Mr Ellison, gave us an assignment to write about someone else’s life.
Meh.
I was thinking about who I’d write about as I walked home from school . . . past an old people’s home.
A flash of inspiration hit me!
So I walked into the home, barrelled up to the front desk, and announced to one of the nurses:
‘I’d like to interview someone really old.’
My 13-year-old logic was this: if I had to pad out an essay, I’d write about the oldest bugger I could find.
The nurses didn’t disappoint. They introduced me to Jack, a man in his 90s.
There was a single black-and-white photo on the bedside table in Jack’s room, and he was sitting with his back to us, staring out the window, when the nurse led me in. He didn’t hear us, so one of the nurses yelled out to him, even though he was only a few metres away:
‘JACK! YOU HAVE A VISITOR!’
He slowly craned his neck around, and I was a little taken aback.
His body was frail and hunched over. His face was riddled with skin cancers. His hands felt like soft leather gloves.
Jack’s voice was croaky and hard to make out, and the nurse, a no-nonsense type of woman, looked at me and yelled:
‘YOU WILL HAVE TO SPEAK LOUDLY TO JACK. HE’S HARD OF HEARING!’
‘OKAY!’ I yelled back, like it was she who was deaf.
As I awkwardly sat on the end of his bed, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I was hanging out in an old people’s home, with this little old man. What the hell had I got myself into?
But I needed my story, and that would take a little time.
So each Thursday I’d stop off on my way home to see Jack, and each Thursday I’d find him patiently waiting for me in his chair, ready to go.
Scott (13) and Jack (90)
And . . . I hated it.
Jack would give me one-word answers, and I’d scrawl random notes on scrap pieces of paper, throw them in my backpack and get the hell out of there.
Yet something changed on my last visit . . . Jack opened up and shared his hard-earned life lessons.
He told me what it was like to live through the Great Depression, when there often wasn’t enough money for food.
He told me about the pain of outliving his son.
He told me about the day he lost his best friend—his wife of over 60 years.
He sat in his chair and confessed his biggest regrets to me, his last visitor: a schoolkid on an assignment.
‘You’re the only person who comes in to see him,’ a nurse whispered to me as I left.
That really hit me.
Later that evening I sat at my desk and read through my notes. I wondered how I would have coped . . . if I would have coped. Compared to the genuine hardship, tragedy and poverty Jack had encountered, my life was a total cream puff.
Something clicked.
I realised I was in a position to do something very special for him—tell his story. So I began working hard on the piece. Harder than I’d ever worked on any assignment in my life. Not for the mark, but for the honour of helping someone.
And a week later, at parent-teacher night, my hard work paid off when the English teacher, Mr Ellison, delivered some bad news to my mother: ‘I suspect Scott has copied this story of Jack from a book.’
After managing to convince him that I was for real, I ended up receiving an A (for perhaps the first and last time in my academic career).
But the real payoff was more profound: meeting Jack—and being able to perform a last act of kindness for him—was one of the pivotal moments of my life. (And for Jack it was pretty special too when I visited him one more time and handed him a copy of his life story.)
From that day I had a new appreciation of how good I had it . . . and I learned one of the crucial lessons about ‘breaking the brat’:
Happiness doesn’t come from stuff—it comes from helping other people.
The hunger games
So, is the answer to frog march your testy teen down to the oldies’ home and get them to churn out a biography?
Actually, I could think of worse things. There’s a lot of wisdom in those places, and a lot of lonely people.
However, after years of thinking about how to engineer a similar experience for my kids, I’ve stumbled onto something that’s pretty simple, but incredibly powerful.
Hunger.
Stay with me here. See, in order for your kids to really learn about giving and happiness it needs to be real.
For kids, food and hunger are real (like, every day on returning home from school).
So your kids are going to give food to people who need it.
‘Giving food? In Australia?’
‘Aren’t we one of the wealthiest countries on earth?’
Yes.
‘And aren’t we also one of the most obese nations on earth?’
Yes, we’re a bunch of teletubbies. In fact, we guzzle so many gallons of fizzy drink the Government is considering a ‘sugar tax’ to try to slow us down.
Yet here’s our nation’s hidden secret:
Approximately 3.6 million Australians were ‘food insec
ure’ (not enough food to feed themselves) in the last 12 months, according to Foodbank, the largest hunger relief organisation in Australia.
Foodbank in fact provides food for 183 000 meals each day, distributed through local community charities.
Yet with all these meals, it’s still not enough. Last year charities across Australia had to turn away 65 000 hungry people each month because there wasn’t enough food to go around.
When I heard this, I thought they were referring to homeless people.
I was wrong.
Almost half (48 per cent) of food-insecure Australians are employed in some way.
And then I stumbled across a figure from Foodbank research that absolutely blew my mind:
One in five schoolkids arrives at school hungry.
That explains why approximately 1750 schools across the country have Breakfast Clubs, to ensure kids are getting their most important meal of the day.
They’re in poor areas. They’re in wealthy areas. They’re in my home town. Chances are there are at least a couple of rumbling tummies in your kids’ classes.
Look, all I’m saying is that food is the perfect way to teach your kids about helping.
Every kid knows what it’s like to be hungry: you can’t concentrate, and you’re irritable until you eat. Well, on a typical day roughly four students in each class will arrive at school hungry or without having eaten breakfast.
And your kids have the chance to do something about it.
Breaking the brat (at any age)
There’s no need to start feeding the masses bread and fish like a motivated messiah. Instead, there are three things your kids can do, with you or independently, depending on their age:
Kids: The pantry giveaway
The easiest way to introduce little kids to the power of helping people is to go to your pantry and see what you can give away (or grow your own veggies, and donate them). Simply google your local Foodbank (they operate in every state), and they’ll tell you what they need most and where you can deliver it.