For some reason, my son and I keep having discussions about renting a home versus owning home, which we finally do.  Though his understanding of the concepts is obviously limited, I’m continually amazed at his determination and the lucidity of his arguments with his limited debating ammunition.

The crux of all these discussions is pretty simple: he wants to thrash the place, and since we now own our home we’ve become a lot stricter about keeping things clean.  He has trouble understanding why he can’t now put his dirty feet on the walls whenever he chooses (somehow his feet seem to end up on the wall more often than his hands do, but the hands contribute as well).  He is unhappy that he can’t bring his muddy shoes in the kitchen anymore.  He’s upset that we don’t allow him to hang his ever expanding body off the cabinet doors anymore or do “swingies” from our new refrigerator.

In his mind, this all comes down the fact that we own now instead of rent, and he’s right.  But obviously my wife and I get a little irked when we saved our whole lives for this and he says things like, “I HATE THIS HOUSE!!  I JUST WANT TO RENT OUR OLD HOUSE AGAIN!”

So, I tried to explain to him that we’re not going back to renting our old home again that was barely half the size of our current home, yet the monthly rent was actually more expensive than our current mortgage payment.  We then got into a discussion about rent versus mortgage payment, and he makes the most obvious yet very insightful observation: “Wait, you’re still paying money every month; why can’t you just pay to rent a home that I can do whatever I want instead of pay to own a home that I can’t do anything??”  Smart little f*cker.  So, I then try to explain in the most basic terms that when you rent you are getting nothing back; the money is gone forever, whereas when you pay a mortgage you’re actually paying yourself back (as well as the greedy banks, of course).  He begrudgingly accepted it.  I don’t think he entirely believed me or understood, but I think he was convinced that we weren’t going to rent, so he let that one die down for a bit.

So, we recently bought a new paper shredder.  We essentially destroyed our old one shredding all the old unnecessary documents before our move, so my wife bought a new one.  While it’s extremely effective, it’s also extremely LOUD.  It reminds me of the end scene of Fargo every time I shred a piece of spam mail.  My son doesn’t like it either.  He said, “Daddy, I don’t like this new paper shredder.  I want you to buy a new one.”  I told him, “Well, buddy, sometimes things are not quite what you hope, but you just have to deal with them.  Paper shredders are expensive and they don’t run all the time, so we have to make do with this one.”  Then he pulls it out: “I don’t understand what you’re doing with all this money now that you own a house instead of rent.  You’re just paying yourself back, right?  Why don’t you just use all that extra money to buy a new paper shredder?”  Dang it; he got me.

I tried to explain that we don’t have all this extra money because we’re paying ourselves back, but he’s not letting this go.  Every time we correct him about making a mess or destroying the house, he says, “I want to go back to our old house and rent again!”

I guess my point is don’t have financial discussions with a 5-year-old.  Their simplistic yet effective arguments will win every time.