Teaching Kids about Money (and a Cute Craft to Help!)

For quite some time now, Biggest has been really into "saving up."  He decides on (what else?) a Lego set, and then saves every scrap of money that comes his way until he has enough.  It's been a great exercise in hard work, patience, and handling money.  However, I've wanted a system to make it easy for him to save and tithe--rather than doing these things haphazardly, or in a bank account he can't see.

Fortunately, my dear friend Blair motivated me and asked me to make money jars for her girls, and then I just got on a roll.

This is just so easy.  Blair saw something similar online, but we adapted our design to our needs, and used my Silhouette to make paper and twine tags for each set of jars.  You can easily do this without a Silhouette, using craft-store tags and stickers, or even have your child help make the tags.

The idea, of course, is that all money gets separated in the 10-10-80 method: 10% to savings, 10% to giving, and 80% for spending.  This way, even a young child can watch his "bank account" get bigger (until we take that cash to the actual bank for deposit to his account); he can also take ownership over giving out of his jar.

For my boys, I made tags to match the colors in their rooms, and laminated them for durability.

For Blair's girls, we made adorable tags and didn't laminate them.  Obviously the design options here are limitless!

I was so excited when Biggest got really into splitting up his birthday money.  We practiced counting money, and had a great conversation about why we believe in setting aside money for tithing.  Then he insisted on going to his old piggy bank to split all that money up too!  Proud mama.  This is just a beginning, but is definitely helps to have a system in place, and it's even better when the system is cute!


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