Teaching How to Save as a Way of Life

How do we teach our children the all-important lesson of saving for their future? One-way is to start with one of our Piggy Banks from Piggy Bank Express. It’s a great way to teach your kids the importance of saving, while giving them a memorable and easy way to begin.

Start With Setting Goals

In our home, we started with setting goals. When our girls were old enough to learn about savings, we gave them three Piggy Banks: one for spending, one for saving, and one for giving. For every $3 in allowance, one-dollar bill would be placed in each jar, providing their first lesson in how to budget money.

The Three Savings Pigs

Now the save jar (probably the most important of the three) doesn’t teach kids about saving money. Goals help with that. Start with having your children make a list of the goals they want to accomplish. This could be the purchase of a toy, money to buy a musical instrument, or saving for a Thanksgiving Turkey for a person in need.

The Best Tool We Tried

Teaching Weekly savings goals for a new Barbie Dream House was much more interesting and a better teaching tool than anything else we tried. Each week our daughters would note how much money was in their savings Piggy Bank, and they would see how much closer they were to their goal.

The Power of Interest

To see the full benefit to saving money, one must understand the concept of interest and how interest payments make your money grow. I played the role of bank and set my own interest rate. At the end of every month, I provided a 10% interest payment for any money the girls had in their savings Pig. This was enough to encourage our kids to keep setting money aside.

Savings Pig vs. Spending Pig

Share a few personal stories with your kids to help them understand and see how saving works in the real world, like saving for a house or your first car. The goal is to help your kids see the difference and value between the Saving Pig and the Spending Pig.

Starting kids out at a young age cements these important lessons in young minds and starts them on the path to becoming a champion saver. You can start in on the lessons with the kids and we’ll ship the Piggy Banks to your door.