I screwed up big time. 5yo comes in an sees a lottery ticket. “What’s that?” Sensing a teachable moment, I say “That, is a waste of money. We could have bought 8 lollipops or a bag of jelly beans, but we wasted it on that ticket to try to win more money.”
He runs off

About an hour later he comes back with tears streaming down his face, clutching the ticket. “What’s wrong little dude?” I ask.

“WHY DID YOU WASTE OUR MONEY ON THIS TICKET!? I would have taken the jelly beans!”

I felt awful.

Luckily my wife found a bag of jelly beans from somewhere and said “oh, well we spent YOUR share on jelly beans. We just wasted our share.”
This stopped the crying at least. But now he’s CONVINCED that I’m a fucking idiot who cannot be trusted with money.

“Daddy is NOT ALLOWED to have the money when you go out next time.”

What a screw up. Thank God my wife keeps emergency bags of candy or If have ended up having to go back out to buy jelly beans before bed.