Encouraging the boys to save for our holiday | Mum In The Madhouse

Encouraging the boys to save for our holiday

Yes, I am going to talk about our holiday again!  We have been encouraging the boys to save money to spend whilst we are in Florida and I have discussed before just how hard it is to get children aged 7 and 8 to save, so I wanted to share with you what has worked for us this time and it is really relevant as Coinstar have just released information for their survey that revealed just under 70% of households have loose change lying around their home that never make it to a savings jar, equating to £60 a year per household on average and a shocking accumulative £1.5 billion in the UK.

coins

 

  1. Make it visible – by putting loose change in to a glass bottle the boys have been able to see their progress.

  2. Make it for something specific

  3. Set a goal and offer incentives

  4. Make it fun – Mini goes on coin hunts when we are out and about.  It is amazing the amount of copper he finds on the floor!

  5. We fill smaller jam jars first so they can see that they are making a difference and their money is mounting up.

The boys have been saving up for around a year and from our previous experience there will be around £70 in both their bottles.  Now not all of this is from their pocket money, but they have been very entrepreneurial in clearing both my purse and MadDad’s pocket of change once a week and they always ask their Nanna and Grandad to save their pennies for them.  In fact they have been charging their friends 20p for a stroke of Alvin!

I have to say that I find it so much easier to focus the boys on saving if there is something that they really want and rather than giving them their £2 pocket money in their hands each week, we only give them £1 and put the other £1 in the bank, which means that they already save in excess of £50 per year.  Maxi has also been earning an extra £1 a week by looking after Alvin.

If you’ve got coins you want to change into spending money,  you can find your nearest Coinstar kiosk here, http://www.coinstar.co.uk/coinmachine

3.