Borrow
Age 5+To take something (often money) that belongs to someone else with a promise to return it.
At a glance
Borrowing means using something that belongs to someone else with a promise to give it back. With money, that promise often comes with a cost — interest — and with a deadline. Kids who learn the basic shape of borrowing at small stakes (a few dollars from next week's allowance) build the instinct that the easy "yes" today always becomes a harder "no" later.
Example sentence
"If you borrow $5 from your allowance next week, you have to pay it back."
Why this matters for kids
Borrowing is the financial habit that quietly shapes the rest of an adult's life. Mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit card debt, personal loans, buy-now-pay-later — modern adulthood is fundamentally a series of borrow-and-repay decisions, and the people who understand the basic math do meaningfully better than the people who don't. Kids who borrow $5 from next week's allowance and discover that next week's allowance is now smaller than usual have just learned the foundational lesson of credit: "now" costs you "later." That early instinct — that borrowing trades freedom in the future for a thing in the present — is the same instinct that keeps a 25-year-old from racking up $8,000 in credit-card debt at 24% APR. Teaching the word with small stakes is far cheaper than letting them learn it on a credit card at twenty.
How to teach it
If they want something urgently — a $15 toy, a $20 t-shirt, a video game — and they don't have the money this week, offer a structured loan instead of a gift. Write down the amount and the repayment schedule. "$15 today, paid back from your next three weeks of allowance at $5 a week." Stick to it. When the next allowance comes and only $0 actually lands in their hand because $5 was already withheld, they feel the weight of the decision in a way no lecture can match. For older kids, introduce interest on the loan — even a small amount, like 5% — so they get the mechanic of paying back more than they borrowed. Whatever you do, do not forgive the debt mid-cycle, even if they have a hard week. The whole lesson collapses if borrowing has no consequence.
Common misconceptions
- Borrowing is free. Borrowing money almost always costs something — either explicit interest or the implicit cost of giving up future income to repay. Even a $5 loan from a parent should "cost" something for the lesson to land.
- I can pay it back later. The deadline matters as much as the amount. Real loans have due dates, and missing them has real consequences. Practice that with small stakes.
- Borrowing is the same as a gift. Some kids hear "borrow" and assume forgiveness will follow. Make the distinction explicit every single time.
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