Childhood is the state through which we
all go through, and most of what we learn then sticks with us throughout our
lives.
As parents, we’re all well aware of the
importance of teaching children the know-how’s of life
and development of good habits, and perhaps one of the most beneficial habit
you can have your child learn, of course, would be how to save money.
The reason is obvious – they are going
to need money throughout their lives, so it’s an invaluable skill that they
simply can’t do without. Kids who don’t learn saving money from a young age
might eventually learn it in their adulthood – at a MUCH higher cost.
Of course, as parents everyone has
already learned these valuable lessons. But here comes the problem – how do we
pass these money saving lessons on to our kids? Children can be a handful
sometimes, and it takes careful and educated approach to have them respond
positively.
Unless it’s fun.
That’s right – the ultimate weapon
against children – fun. Make any activity FUN and they will not only learn it
at an alarming pace, they will keep doing it until it stops being fun anymore.
Now that we have found our weapon, we’re
going to need some ammunition to go with it. That is to say, HOW do we go about
making money saving fun for the kids?
There may be many ways to go about it.
I’ll go through just a few to give you an idea.
The traditional way to go about it is to
buy them acute piggy-bank.It’s simple and effective, but to really utilize this
age old idea to its fullest potential you’ll need to endear the little piggy to
your child – make it a part of their life! Treat the piggy-bank as an entity
that relies on the coins fed to him for survival. If you just buy them a piggy-bank
and they only think of it as fleeting toy to eventually break, it becomes
pointless.
What I’d personally prefer, however,
would be to make money saving a game. That’s right, a game. Games are
synonymous to fun, especially for kids. It will be entirely up to you to decide
how to go about doing this, depending on your child’s personality, but I’ll
give you two hints to help you along.
First of all, if you have two or more
children, you can make money saving a competition. The one who saves up more
money gets to decide what’s for desert, or maybe they get the top bunk, or the
better room – something along those lines.
For a single child, you will have to
motivate him through non-competitive means. For example, if he or she likes
monopoly, make it a rule to allow usage of real money in addition to game
currency. That makes it so the child keeps on getting more and more of an edge
over you whenever the two of you play (or with family).
