Madelyn has had this piggy bank since she was born.
And it has served her well. She is a great saver, always putting the money she receives or earns in the bank. Recently, however, she's been more interested in
spending her money, so I thought it was a good time to add some lessons about money into this whole process.
I have always been a good saver, ever since I started earning my own money as a babysitter. Chris, on the other hand, is our family spender. ;) We'd like Madelyn to be somewhere in between where she knows how to save and share what she has, but also can spend some, too.
I found the book called,
Three Cups: Give, Save, Spend, that is a story about a little boys' birthday gift of three cups. It's a sweet story where you can read about the importance of sharing, saving, and spending your money.
I also found the MoonJar, three banks that separate money into those three categories: Save, Share, Spend.
We read the book to Madelyn this morning, and talked about the special bank. We thought the New Year was a great time to start new habits. She was extremely excited to sort out the money from her "old" piggy bank, and put it into her new ones!
We emptied her bank, and had a huge pile of money, both coins and cash!
We took the opportunity to make a sorting game of this adventure, placing each coin or bill in a pile with other like coins and bills.
Then came the part I wasn't really looking forward to… counting it! Daddy volunteered to go buy a coin sorter (he really is the spender in the family), but I insisted we do it the "old fashioned" way. ;)
Once it was into piles that each equalled a dollar, we were ready to count! And boy oh boy were we surprised!
$174.82!
I also came across a super great website that helps teach kids about money, and uses the same three concepts, Share, Save, Spend. The website is called
ThreeJars.com. It's based on an IOU system from the parents to the kids, so there's no money added to the site. Once we totaled the money, we logged into the website and added our total. The website did the rest!
Parent Login Page
Based on the settings Chris and I agreed on, it calculated what went where. We set her allocations as follows: 10% to sharing first, then with what's left, 50% goes to savings, and 40% to spending. We also agree on 10% interest to whatever is in savings. Madelyn is still learning all of these things, but I think after some time she will catch on, especially as she sees her money growing on the ThreeJars website.
When we went back to the jars to add the money, we actually realized we miscounted. Score! Madelyn ended up with a whopping $202.82! Not too shabby for a few years of saving dollars and lose change!
Tomorrow Madelyn and I will go to the bank to get some "old-school" coin rolls and get the coins rolled for her savings, and then deposit it in her bank account at my bank. She's very excited about that!
Madelyn's Login Page
UPDATE: We went to the bank this morning and found out that we didn't have to use the coin wrappers after all! They told us since Madelyn (a child) was depositing money into her account there wouldn't be a fee to use the money-counting machine! WOO HOO! We enjoyed making the deposit!
