Finance and Loan Guide

It is time for another family finance guides, guys If there’s a new family member in your house, you can bet that in his/her three year’s anniversary your beloved son/daughter will gather quite a few dollar bills from other family members or relatives for events like anniversary or Christmas.

Some of us chose to allow our kids to spend the money immediately for some low-cost toys/food such as hot wheels or something. It’s a simple lesson we teach to our son that money is something that can be exchange for goods and services.

Although I do agree with that statement, I prefer to teach my son/daughter on how to save some of them. Why? Because he once asked for a more expensive toy and if he keeps spending the money the way he is now, he won’t be able to buy the toy with his own money…

Here’s an easy example: You take your son (with 2 dollars with him) to the store, and instead of wanting a 2 dollar toy, he prefer the $7.99 toy.

So here’s how I will deal with it:

I will tell him: “the toy costs eight dollars. You only have two dollars. You don’t have enough dollars to buy that toy.” We will work through the counting using our fingers so that he understood that he needed six more dollars.

That won’t shake his interest in the toy, however. I bet that he still wants it.

Then explain to your child that if he/she doesn’t spend the dollars he has today, we can take them home and then we wait for another 6 dollars and then we buy the toy. It will take some more explanations, but do not give up yet

In your home, prepare a jar lid to store your beloved son/daughter’s money. Transparent jar lid would be better Hopefully, your son has been able to add some money to the jar – he can clearly see his savings as it builds up. He knows what it’s for and he’s excited to contribute to it whenever he can.

To put it simply, saving money has now become relevant and exciting for him. It’s very tangible – he can see his savings grow. He also has a goal that’s small enough that it seems reachable – he only needs to save up to $8, after all.

So what’s next? The near future points us to our child’s next lesson: how do you earn money? That will be a whole new adventure.

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Tags: Family finance, finance guides, financial plan, saving, saving guides

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Family finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.