April 24, 2024
4 Fun Ways to Teach Your Children to Save Money
Saving money and ‘fun’ aren’t terms you often hear together, but there are ways you can make learning to save entertaining! It’s important that our kids learn the basics of saving money and financial literacy from a young age, so they can get the best head start possible. Here are four fun ways to teach your children to save money:
1. Play Pretend Grocery Shopping
If your child is old enough to count and do basic math, this is a great game to teach them about budgeting and saving money! Turn your kitchen or living room into a pretend grocery store by gathering some of your canned and boxed items, putting “price tags” on them, and lining them up for “purchase.” Next, give your child a calculator and a budget to stick to.
This game can also be done in an actual store, especially once your child has had some practice with budgeting.
2. Encourage Chores for Goals
One of the best ways to encourage saving is to give your child a goal to save towards. Does your kid want a new bike? They can save for it! Whether you pay an allowance for chores, or your child does chores for a neighbor, you can help them plan out how to save money for their end goal.
Sit down with your child and write out how much they make for their chores and how much their goal item costs. Then you can calculate how long it will take to save enough money to purchase it.
This method will help motivate your child to save money, and perhaps to even do more chores! Additionally, it will help your child learn how to track their money earned versus their money spent. The Internet is chockful of different simple and printable tracking sheets, where children can track the money that they’ve earned (be it from chores, allowances, gifts, etc.), so they can determine how close they are to making their goal purchase. Once they’ve made that purchase, they can track their “expenses” and see what they’re left over with for their next goal item.
(For tech savvy kids and older children, there are many smartphone apps that can also track this!)
If you want to teach your children about interest rates, you can incorporate a small monthly interest rate into their savings plan! Each month, give them interest for what they have earned from their chores (1-2%) so they’ll understand the concept of savings account interest rates at a young age.
3. Start a Piggy Bank
Seems simple, right? It is! The wonderful thing about a piggy bank is you can start one with your child at an incredibly young age. This provides that initial concept of saving, simply by your child seeing coins and dollar bills placed inside it.
There are so many variations of the “piggy bank” today that you can find one your child is certain to get excited about (dinosaur, truck, castle, or kitten, anyone?)! Even before children understand what money is used for or why saving is important, they can witness the process of saving in an enjoyable way!
Piggy banks can allow kids to get creative, too! While the goal is to learn about saving money, this is also an opportunity to help them explore their artistic side. There are many different DIY options – from building your own using recycled materials to painting an unfinished ceramic piggy bank.
4. Open a Youth Savings Account
If you haven’t already, bring your child into your credit union to open a youth savings account! If they already have one, bring them in with you the next time you make a deposit. Start getting your children involved in the banking process so they can become familiar with the ins and outs of financial life.
Bringing your child with you to your credit union will help instill a sense of responsibility and maturity, that will thus encourage the desire to learn how to budget and to continue saving money for goals.
There are many ways you can teach your children to save money, and the earlier you start, the more they can learn! Give your child the best financial head start by teaching them how to budget and save for goals and by opening a youth savings account at your credit union!