Our boys are at an age (7 and 5) that they’re now totally aware of money. Because of this new awareness, I came up with a craft last month to help them earn extra money and it’s been a huge hit. That chore board totally worked and they were earning their dollars every weekend. Those dollars inevitably got lost amongst their toys or were used to buy an ice cream after school, or maybe, if we were really on it that week, we remembered to have them bring it for the tithe bucket in Sunday school. The honest truth is though, while I know they earn those dollars, I can’t really always tell you where the money ends up. This realization lead me to the conclusion that it’s not enough to teach them how to earn money, I also need to teach them how to save it as well.
Then I heard about the book Smart Money, Smart Kids and it was so timely I nabbed myself a copy. The book is written by Dave Ramsey and his daughter Rachel Cruze and gives great advice and ideas for everything from teaching your kids to work, to spending, to encouraging them to give some of that money away. It’s written in an engaging way (which is saying a lot for the lady who mostly reads books about Vampire love triangles!) and it definitely got me thinking about how to apply these ideas to our own life, particularly how important it is that they learn to save.
Saving, changes your children’s relationship with money, it teaches them patience and how to set and achieve a goal. In short, these are all things my boys need and so I had to figure out how to incorporate the ideas in a chic way. Get ready readers, there’s a craft up ahead!
Every summer the Hollis family takes a summer vacation. Sometimes it’s a short getaway to Palm Springs, sometimes it’s fancy and requires passports but either way we choose a destination and we go. This year I thought it’d be neat to incorporate the boys into planning and saving for the trip.
We worked together to create a Dream Vacation board… basically I just grabbed a ton of old magazines and encouraged the boys to tear out any pictures that looked like something they’d like to do on vacation. Their choices included: swimming, roller coasters, drinking yogurt from one of those squeezy pouches and a picture of a zebra chasing a lion. Not totally sure how all of those apply, but you know what, this is their dream board too so who am I to judge? My pictures involved laying on the beach, hiking, several different kinds of cake and a perfect looking glass of white wine… hubby wasn’t there to help us that day, but I assure you, he’d be just as excited about that wine and cake as I am.
Once we had enough pictures to fill our canvas I used Mod Podge to glue them down. Once they dried (about 4 hours) I used it again as a thin layer over the top to make it look shiny.
When the shiny top coat dried completely I printed out the letters for vacation (each letter is a different font) and glued those on as well.
The end result is colorful and bright and filled with a pretty visual to help us towards our goal. I leaned it against the counter in the kitchen and placed a glass jar next to it (again, it’s important for them to see the money accumulate).
The boys use the money they earn from their extra chores to fill the jar and every week we tally up how much we’ve saved. We take that number and multiply it by 10 (mommy and daddy’s contribution) and then put it into the savings account. After 5 weeks we have $187 saved, we’ve agreed to save until July 4th weekend whatever we have at that point is what we have to spend on our getaway. You could use this same idea on smaller projects like helping your own kids save for a new bike, a game or karate classes. In our case, multiplying the money was necessary (otherwise we’d be camping in the backyard!) but with smaller items I’d encourage you to let them experience the achievement of raising the money all by themselves.
If you make your own board, I hope you’ll tag a photo on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with #TheChic so we can see what you’re saving for. And a big shout out to our friends at Dave Ramsey who partnered with us on this idea! As for us, I’ll keep you posted on where our saving takes us… let’s just hope they serve cake! ~Rachel
