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My four-year-old twins have discovered Pokémon cards.

If you're unfamiliar with Pokémon, the basic premise is that there are hundreds of little fictional creatures, each with its own name, appearance, and special abilities. The creatures appear on trading cards that kids (and plenty of adults) collect, trade, and sometimes use to play a game.

Most cards are worth pennies. Some sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

My boys know approximately none of this.

As far as they're concerned, Pokémon cards are little pieces of cardboard with cool pictures on them, and they would very much like to own every single one.

It's been a surprisingly good introduction to money. We're working through those first financial questions, like why we can't buy 10 packs every time we go to the store, and why sometimes we have to choose between one thing we want and another.

Mostly, though, they're just having a wonderful time.

We've started visiting a local comic book shop, where some incredibly kind collectors have taken the boys under their wing. They let them dig through boxes of inexpensive cards, help them find their favorites and sometimes hand them a few for free. I suspect they remember what it felt like to fall in love with the hobby themselves.

One of my sons now carries a binder of his favorite cards in a backpack so he can show them to anyone willing to look.

And here's what I've loved most about watching them collect: They have absolutely no idea which cards they're supposed to want.

They pick whatever catches their eye. A cool-looking dragon. A funny little creature with a ridiculous face. Something pink and sparkly. Whether it costs 10 cents or $10 doesn't matter.

They just know what they like.

Or at least, they did.

The Little Sheep That Wasn't Worth Much

Recently, we spent an afternoon with friends whose slightly older kids also collect Pokémon cards.

Naturally, the binders came out.

My son was admiring a card in one of the older boys' collections when the boy announced proudly, "Oh yeah, that's the most expensive card in my binder."

There's nothing wrong with that. Understanding rarity and what other collectors will pay is part of the fun once kids get old enough.

But my son had never thought about his cards that way. So he held up one of his own favorites.

"This one is my favorite," he said. "Is it expensive?"

It was Wooloo, a Pokémon that looks like an impossibly fluffy little sheep. In fairness, it's an excellent sheep.

But no, the card wasn't expensive.

And when he learned that, his face fell. No tears, no tantrum. Just the quiet, unmistakable disappointment of a little kid realizing that something he loves isn't as impressive to someone else as he'd hoped.

It was such a small moment. I haven't stopped thinking about it.

Five minutes earlier, that card was one of his favorite possessions. He loved the fluffy sheep. He was proud of the fluffy sheep. He wanted to show everyone the fluffy sheep.

Then he found out other people wouldn't pay much for it. And suddenly, that seemed to matter.

Nothing about the card had changed. Only the way he was looking at it.

When Do We Start Letting Price Tags Decide?

I've spent more than a decade writing about personal finance, and now that my boys are asking questions about money, I think a lot about what I want them to understand.

I want them to learn how to earn, save, invest and spend responsibly. I want them to know that things cost money, that we can't have everything we want (and that's okay), and that sometimes we have to choose between what feels good now and what's better for us later.

But I'm realizing there's another lesson I need to teach them, too:

Money matters because of what it lets us do, have, experience and enjoy. But the price of something doesn't determine how much we're supposed to enjoy it.

That's harder to master than it sounds.

You might love your house. You saved for years to buy it, you've made it your own, and it's where your family gathers at the end of the day. Then you visit a friend's new place, with its enormous kitchen and professionally landscaped backyard, and suddenly yours feels a little small.

Or you're perfectly happy with your car until a coworker pulls in with a fancier badge on the hood.

Or you have a wonderful vacation, then see someone's photos from a luxury resort and wonder whether you should have gone somewhere nicer.

The house hasn't changed. Neither has the car. You didn't enjoy your vacation any less while you were on it.

But now you have something to compare it to.

You don't have to be particularly materialistic for this to happen. It's human. We look around to figure out what's desirable and successful, and because money offers such a convenient yardstick, price starts standing in for qualities that are much harder to measure.

Quality. Happiness. Achievement. Worth.

Price can even change how we experience something in the moment. In a well-known 2008 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Caltech and Stanford had volunteers taste wines labeled with different prices. Some of the "different" wines were actually the same wine. Participants reported enjoying the identical wine more when they were told it was more expensive, and brain scans showed more activity in a region associated with pleasure.

Same wine. Different price tag. Different experience.

Sometimes price tells us something useful. Sometimes it tells us very little.

Expensive and Valuable Aren't the Same Thing

To be clear, there's nothing wrong with liking expensive things. Ask anyone who knows me, I like plenty of expensive things.

Sometimes paying more gets you better quality, better performance, more convenience or an experience you genuinely love. If you've worked hard, saved thoughtfully and can comfortably afford something that makes you happy, you don't need to apologize for buying it.

But here's the distinction I keep coming back to:

There's a difference between wanting something that happens to be expensive and wanting something because it's expensive.

One starts with what you value. The other starts with what someone else values.

And the second one gets awfully expensive, awfully fast. There's always a bigger house. A nicer car. A more exclusive vacation. A watch (or Pokémon card) that costs more than the one you already own. If the goal is to have the thing that impresses other people, there's no finish line.

That's why I think knowing what matters to you is one of the most underrated financial skills there is.

What I Hope My Boys Learn

Since the Wooloo incident, we've been talking more about the difference between expensive and valuable.

I'm trying to help the boys understand that a card can be expensive because it's rare or because lots of people want it. That's real, and understanding how prices work matters. But it doesn't automatically make it a better card for them.

A $100 card might be somebody's dream find. A 10-cent card might be the one you want to carry in your backpack and show everyone you meet. Both are perfectly good reasons to love a card.

So now, when one of them asks, "Is that card expensive?" I tell them I don't know how much money it costs — but is there something about it they think is special?

I don't expect my four-year-olds to walk away with a sophisticated understanding of markets, consumer psychology, and personal values. We're still working on why 10 packs of Pokémon cards isn't a reasonable Monday afternoon activity. And there will be plenty of times when they want something mostly because somebody else has it.

I still do that sometimes, and I'm considerably older than four.

But I hope that as they grow up, they learn to recognize the difference. I hope they can appreciate beautiful, expensive things without feeling they need to own them. I hope they can celebrate what someone else has without wondering whether what they have is good enough. And I hope they understand that enjoying something doesn't require anyone else's approval.

I want my boys to grow up knowing exactly how much money matters.

And exactly how much it doesn't.

So if one of them decides his favorite card in the whole world is a 10-cent picture of a fluffy sheep?

I hope he loves that little Wooloo for as long as he wants.

It's an excellent sheep, after all.