Does your teen have champagne taste on a beer budget?

Joe Brisebois is 14 years old, jobless and lives with his middle-class family, yet he has the taste of a Hollywood celebrity.

“Gucci, Supreme, Off-White, Versace,” Joe said, listing off his favourite brands. “I like the quality of the shirts, the designs and I like how not very many other people can have it, so I’m not just like everybody else.”

Joe got his first taste of designer labels watching videos of kids on YouTube and eyeing up the gear of a select few students at his Sherwood Park high school. He recently told his mom he would like an $800 pair of Gucci sneakers for Christmas. While she wasn’t surprised, she wasn’t receptive.

“Um, what kind of false reality are you living in kid?” Jenn Brouwer said with a laugh. “I told him that if he wanted them on his Christmas list, he would be getting one gift from me and his entire extended family. So on Christmas morning, he would literally have one present.”

Joe wasn’t big on that option, so Brouwer and her son came up with another idea. She would give him the $100 she would normally dish out when he needed a new pair of shoes and Joe would have to come up with the rest. He shovelled snow off driveways in his neighbourhood at $10 to $15 a house. He also asked extended family for cash for Christmas. Within several weeks, Joe managed to scrounge up the money.

“We kind of have an unspoken rule where he has to want something for at least a month or two before I will allow him to buy it because the fads change so fast,” Brouwer said. “Eight-hundred dollars took him a long time to come up with, so it wasn’t something I just wanted him to go, ‘Oh, well this month it’s trendy so I’m going to spend every cent of my hard-earned money on it and next month I’m not going to like it.'”

Joe’s only concern is that his feet will grow too fast to enjoy the shoes for long. Parenting Power’s Gail Bell says whether the shoes turn out to be a priceless purchase or a luxury lemon, Joe has learned a valuable lesson in hard work and delayed gratification.

“As long as his shovelling isn’t taking away from his schoolwork, his sleep or his responsibilities around the home, I think it’s great he went out and figured out how to make money,” Bell said.

She recommends that parents set and discuss their own family’s budget with their children, even pinpointing “this is what we spend on this.”

“We all have different values about stuff. Some of us would rather have one cashmere sweater than 10 cotton and other fabric sweaters, so we’re all different,” Bell said. “As long as we know as parents, we are not trying to please our children by getting them things. That’s just pleasure versus creating kids that are happy inside, that they know they have a purpose.”

Joe has found a purpose for his next few months of free time: shovelling. At least that’s what he’ll need to do if he wants to even make a dent in the $5,000 Supreme Louis Vuitton hoodie on his list.