The Savvy Saver Pig
Over here, we're big fans of teaching children to be givers as early as possible, in all aspects of time, talent and treasure. (Check out these five posts.)
That's why we love this blog post by Meg Buckingham, Relationship Manager for United Way of the Greater Triangle. Meg talks about introducing the concepts of saving, spending, donating money and investing to her little four-year-old...showing that it's never too early to encourage kids to give.
(By the way, Meg, there's nothing feeble about your efforts; kudos to you!)
"My feeble attempt to raise a smart, charitable, saving little boy…" (From UnitedWayTriangle.org)
Three months ago, when my then four-year-old son’s begging for toys in Target finally reached unbearable levels, I decided to do a little research on giving an allowance. I wanted to know if he was too young, and if not, how much I should be giving per week.
...The experts told me that he should get a dollar for every year of his life per week, but I decided to disagree. I really couldn’t imagine giving a four year old FOUR dollars a week – $16 a month – $192 a year?!? That just seems so ridiculous to me – what could he ever need/want with that money at his age? So my husband and I decided on two dollars a week. And he gets that amount in quarters, and here’s why.
...I really wanted to use this opportunity to do more than just teach him how to save his money. I wanted to use it to teach him what’s important in life, how lucky he is, and to look to his future as well. So while I was grappling with how to do that one day, while wandering around a toy store I came across this awesome pig. Its name is Money Savvy Pig and it’s fantastic!!
...My son loves this pig, and so do we. Each Friday, he gets eight quarters. He has to put 2 quarters in the donate slot and two quarters in the invest slot each week, giving us the opportunity to teach him that no matter what, we give some of our money to the less fortunate and some of our money goes to pay for our future...
Thank you for the repost and the compliment. Such an important issue - financial literacy starts at the very beginning!
Thanks Meg for sharing your story.