It's no secret that having kids is expensive. That's why it's recommended that people don't get pregnant until they're financially able. According to a USDA report, single-parent families fork out a staggering $172,000 raising their kid until the age of 17. That's a lot of dough - and that's just an estimate. Most parents want to send their kids to college too.
One two-year-old, however, cost his parents a lot more than they could have ever bargained for when he decided to shred a significant amount of money - money they had planned to spend on football season tickets. A whole $1,060.
Credit: Twitter / @Benbelnap
Taking to Twitter, two-year-old Leo's father shared pictures of the, um, incident, writing:
"So me and my wife had been saving up to pay for our @Utah_Football tickets in cash. We pulled our money out yesterday to pay my mom for the reason... Well we couldn't find the envelope until my wife checked the shredder. Yup. 2 year old shredded $1,060."
Credit: Twitter / @Benbelnap
Now, if that isn't the stuff of parenting nightmares, I don't know what is.
So what on Earth possessed Leo to shred the cash? I hear you ask. Well, his dad had previously enlisted his help shredding, y'know, actual cash, and presumably having enjoyed the process, he decided to do it alone...
Credit: Twitter / @Benbelnap
Yeah, two-year-olds really are too young to understand the meaning of money.
When I was a kid, I donated the $5 bill my mom had given me for lunch to a charity collection in school and then tried to pay for my food with a quarter - and this was back in the 90s when I would have been a fair few years older than Leo!
Not everyone, however, believed that two-year-old Leo was capable of such destruction, with Twitter user @TorranceMcClell questioning why there was so much green in the picture and no white.
Credit: Twitter / @TorranceMcClell
Ben then explained that the envelope had been separated from the cash.
Credit: Twitter / @Benbelnap
Thankfully, the incident wasn't a total disaster, and because the original tweet garnered so much attention on the microblogging website, it eventually reached the Utah Ticket Office, who offered free tickets to Ben and his wife.
Credit: Twitter / @UtahUtesTickets
All's well that ends well then!