I went to the People’s Museum of Manchester, England the other day and accidentally walked into a gold mine of financial comedy thanks to English kids. The Museum has a section dedicated to the history of finance. It talks about financial bubbles, crashes, how English and American banks financed the Industrial Revolution, and more. To make the exhibit more kid friendly, they had a bunch of children write what they would do “if they had all the money in the world.” After scribbling down their answers, they stuck them on the wall. As you might expect, asking a bunch of 7-12 year olds what they would do if they were fabulously wealthy didn’t disappoint. After studying the notes and pretending to be an expert on child financial psychology, I found the kids seemed to fall into eight groups. I think most of these categories coincidentally reflect what adults would say too, just in a less direct way. After all, out of the mouths of babes comes truth. Let’s see what the different groups of kids said they would do with money if they had all they could ever want.
The Anarchists
These kids were really scary. The common theme was that they would blow up, burn, or otherwise exterminate their new found cash holdings. One of the kids had really good reasoning. “If I had all the money, other people would want some and beat me up, and then I’d have no money.” These kids loved the chaos and shock that would result from talking all their new found wealth and starting the biggest bonfire in history. They don’t want to be sellouts. They view money as an immoral object that doesn’t help people and only corrupts the ones who have it. Their solution is to make sure no one has it. Then everyone has to be nice to one another and share.
The Nature Lovers
There’s worse things you could spend all the money in the world on, right? The world GDP is over $40 trillion last I checked so that would buy a lot of forests full of dogs. Two other kids separately said they had a desire to own a pet monkey. Some spoke with great excitement over the prospect of owning their own farm stocked full of animals. Nature purchases really appealed to these kids as a way to make the Earth a cleaner, greener place. Future World Wildlife Fund donors belong to this group. Philanthropic directors should try and get their contact info now because these are your go-to people for future “Save the Panda” campaigns.
The Drug and Alcohol Users
I was really stunned at the graphic descriptions of the drugs and alcohol people would buy as these responses were coming from younger people. Hopefully English kids just know more about the substances from good anti-Drug education in schools. That’s what I’m going to tell myself at least. In addition to buying Mary Jane, one of the kids said he would “buy all the beer in the world.” Another drew a crude picture of a man with a construction hat who appeared to be snorting something. I think these kids were just joking around and trying to be adult-like in their humor. However, there are whole groups of adults that dedicate a huge part of their spending to intoxicating substances. Whenever a Hollywood celebrity dies prematurely, it seems like some strange drug is involved. When professional athletes win championships they use champagne bottles costing thousands and thousands of dollars and blast the contents up into the air, after which point they buy more alcohol and get plastered. Sadly, many people are addicted to drugs and alcohol and make the acquisition of these items a central part of their financial lives.
The Sports Obsessed
Several of the kids wanted to buy professional Soccer teams (known as Football in the UK). These kids’ love of sports is so high that they would be willing to dump their entire fortune into Everton FC, the NY equivalent of the Jets in the English city of Liverpool, just to see them be successful. That’s like a kid saying he would pay any price for the Oakland Raiders. It shows true passion for sport. Whether it’s boosters spending millions of dollars for new athletic facilities or Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, paying four times the last recorded NBA franchise purchase price for the Los Angeles Clippers, I have discovered that sports are not a great thing for dispassionate thinking. I’ve been in Balkan countries where old men are placing bets on upcoming Football matches through odds listed in the newspaper. Clearly anyone getting news ahead of time in that scenario would have a huge advantage. The only reason you would place bets based on the odds listed in a newspaper is if you throw money at sports without concern for anything else. Someone could always beat you by using the internet and checking injury reports. Spending money on sports is just another category that will happily bleed you dry until you are left without any cash. That doesn’t mean there aren’t people who would sacrifice their first borns for their English football club to have a chance at a title.
The Charitably Inclined
I was happy to see that all hope for the human race is not lost. Some of the kids showed their compassion for their fellow man by saying they would eliminate poverty and help others. One kid sweetly said she would “pay off my best friend’s mortgage so she doesn’t have to lose her house.” These are the bleeding hearts, the kind of kids that will turn into volunteers and work for way less money than they could actually make if they tried to get paid for their skills. The more people in this group, the better the world will be for it. It was really nice to see the number of kids that would give substantial sums to charity if they were fabulously wealthy.
The Spenders
Just in case you can’t read it, the note on the left says “I would by a pinck lambgeeny. I would by a rily posh house.” That note made my day. The kind of materialism displayed by 25% of the posts was hilarious. Apparently lots of kids really like the idea of owning a “posh” house in England. Another little girl said she would “become a goddess and have pretty things like jewelry and stuff.” Other responses included “BUY ALL THE CANDYYYYY!!!!”, “Gamble, New wardrobe, Big House, Fast cars, Party 24/7, Holidays Every Weekend”, “Toys, Toys, Toys, and a shoppin spree”, and the one at the top of the article that said “I would own KFC and make them do beef burgers.” These kids are the cornerstone of the future capitalist economy. No matter how many articles I write here at Millennial Moola, they will not be stopped from enjoying every material possession that life can provide. They will buy lots of consumer goods and help companies that I own stock in earn profits. These profits will pay me dividends and I will become richer all the while these future consumers will become trapped in a lifestyle of debt and more, more, more. I hope I can reach a few of them before the mortgage on their posh house traps them. I want them to have a freedom in life that few of their factory worker ancestors could ever dream of.
The Future Millionaires
This group was really surprising to me. The number of kids saying they wanted to save and become rich means I’m going to have to stay on my toes because they might have better advice than me one day. Whether they wanted to use the money to buy income producing assets or just pump the cash into the economy for banks to make loans, these kids had their heads on straight.
The Politically Minded
For those that don’t know, David Cameron is the Conservative Party Prime Minister of Great Britain. Any children of union households or working class backgrounds would have parents that are less likely to support him. Kids usually copy their parents political views when they’re young, but this degree of passion is different. Being down for using their money for political purposes shows these kids will blow their life’s savings to put a certain candidate in office or fund a special interest group fighting for a single issue. Another really funny comment was “Take over the wurld. Mansion everything in the world.” I’m assuming that kid wanted to be world dictator and then drastically increase the quality of world trade so that everything would be “mansioned.” Truly hilarious.
Which of the 8 Groups of English Kids Are You From?
So to review, we have the Anarchists, the Nature Lovers, the Drug and Alcohol Users, the Sports Obsessed, the Charitably Inclined, the Spenders, the Future Millionaires, and the Politically Minded. You might belong to several of these groups. If you think about why people use money, most of the big reasons are represented by what these kids said. My goal in running this site is to turn some of you away from the Spenders and move you firmly into the Future Millionaires column. I just want everyone realize they can be financially free. Once you know you have a choice I’ve done my job and you can make your own decision.
What would you do with all the money in the world? Did I leave out a key category? Comment below!