Teaching Kids About Money

I took my seven year old in to open up his first bank account a couple of weeks ago. He was SO excited. He brought in his 3 wallets stuffed full of $132 dollars of which he had saved from holiday presents and the tooth fairy (he has lost SEVEN teeth over the last few months and at the going rate of $5 per tooth he was earning a pretty steady bank roll). He had plans for this money and wanted to buy a scooter he saw last time we visited the toy store that cost $150.

I wanted to teach him about money and savings and the value of things at a young age because I think it's super important. Before we opened up his bank account we played at home with his new Teaching ATM Bank from Learning Resources. It's a really cool way for kiddos to learn how to save and keep track of money. The ATM comes with fake dollars and coins, but also accepts and counts real coins too! IT works like a real ATM, accepting deposits and making withdraws as well, I wanted him to feel comfortable taking his money and keeping it at a real bank.

The ATM also doubles as a fun cash register because at our house we love playing store! Over Spring Break we actually played store twice, once in my sons room and the other time in our backyard. It kept him quite busy making little price tags for everything and he loved when we shopped his sections even more! As a parent, I loved that he was secretly using is math skills wile on school break by adding up our totals, counting our pretend dollars, and then making change from his ATM. We love toys at our house that can be used in a variety of ways!

So, back to the bank account/scooter story. I made a deal with him that if he got all 3's on his 3rd quarter report card, I would give him the extra $18 he needed to buy his scooter, He had been working so hard in school and had be lusting over this scooter now got 1/2 a year. Report cards came out and he managed to pull his French grade up from a 2 to a 3 (his school doesn't give out A's and B's - their highest mark is a 3) earning him that extra $18!

We took him to the toy store that weekend after swinging by the bank to withdrawal all of his earnings, and he actually fell in love with a scooter that was $50 less! This made us all really happy because I didn't really want him to deplete his entire bank account a month after opening it!

The scooter is a hit and when we're not riding that around the neighborhood we've been getting in some serious play time with his Teaching ATM because he's already plotting his next purchase with his leftover money he saved!