Last updated on November 19th, 2023 at 12:33 am
I think teaching our children about money as early as possible is so important. Whether you decide to teach your child about money using their toy cash register and fake pennies or through providing an allowance and doing chores around the house, either way teaches them life lessons from the start. There is so many various ways you can integrate learning about money when they are babies into young adulthood.
Even though my children are 3 and 5 years old, we have been talking and teaching them about money as soon as they could count. We show them how to understand the value of £1 and how to decide to save or spend it. You would be surprised how much your little spenders actually understand what you are teaching them. We have two very different little spenders in our house. It’s great to see how differently they go about using their money.
My son would spend his pennies on something small right away because he doesn’t mind smaller but more toys. I think that’s because he is a bit older to him more toys is better. Whereas my daughter, saves her pennies because she likes to buy bigger items and is more patient to wait for them. She doesn’t mind having less toys but a big value item to play with. As they age, we get to see the different ways different children understand and work out how to spend and save their money.
I asked my son what he would buy if I gave him a large lump sum of money of £5,000. I fully expected him to say a race car because he is obsessed with fast cars, driving by the house or on the motorway when one passes us. I always tell him he will have to save a lot of money to buy one when he is older. But he surprised me and said, no because a race car is just one prize and I would rather buy lots and lots of legos so he could build a house out of legos and make a race car out of legos to drive. He said that way he could change his prize into anything he wanted if he got bored of the lego house and lego car.
I love his logic. To him, he can create anything with legos so that’s the very best prize he could ever buy because he can create something different with it every day if he wanted. While he didn’t quite understand just how large £5,000 really was building a house and race car out of legos would probably take £5,000 to accomplish. I love that he worked out that he might get sick of whatever item he spends his money on so he wanted a plan b in motion, the option to change his purchase into something different.
What would your child spend £5,000 on? Would they go for Disneyland or perhaps an ice cream cone every day of the year. Whatever it may be, why not have them draw a picture of their dream spending spree and enter the competition below to win the family some great prizes. See details of competition below.
ENTER COMPETITION HERE:
Contest Rules:
Ideally child needs to be between 5 and 10 years old to enter. The prize will be £200 of Love2shop vouchers and a National Trust annual family membership and will be awarded by the team at Foresters Friendly Society. Competition ends at midnight on August 29th.
This post is in collaboration with Foresters Friendly Society.
