Its essential to teach children good money habits from an early age. By starting young, their financial needs are often simple to navigate and it gets them used to the idea of spending, saving and giving. We are also starting to talk about spending on the essential and spending on the fun. Here is our story…
You can read the first part of this story here…
Teach Children Good Money Habits by Three Using Separate Pots
(Mum – 11 years parenting)
“I finished my homework.” Tomos shuts down his laptop and wanders over the sofa. “What are you doing?” He glances over interested.
“The budget for next month.” I answer a little bit distracted because its numbers and that does mean I have to concentrate.
“Can I do that with my money?” He grabs his phone and opens up his pocket money app.
“Sure, I’m just putting money into different pots or sections to cover what we will need. Things like a food pot, a bills pot, a savings pot, a little bit of fun money and so on.” With great difficulty I haul my attention to him fully because this is an important conversation and it will be good for him to start budgeting.
“What pots do you think you might need?” I ask
“Well I already have one for my bus money. But I think I need one for my school stuff. And I want to keep some as fun money.” He starts to create separate jars in his app.
“What about a giving pot? So you have something saved to buy presents at Christmas and birthdays and stuff like that?” I suggest.
“Ok. How much should I put in each one?” He asks. We chat a for a little bit longer about how he could split up his small monthly allowance.
“Done.” He finishes proudly.
“And now you have the money to get a new ruler to replace the one you lost.” I turn back to my own, slightly more complicated budget.
“Oh, I don’t need one now, I found it tucked into my English book.”
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Good Resources to Help Teach Children Good Money Habits
Here are some excellent resources to help your children start to budget well and learn vital skills for money management later on.
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