Recently, I attended a parenting course organized by my neighborhood community center. One of the topic is to teach your children about financial literacy. Just like me, I believe many parents out there does not know where to start when it comes to teaching your children about money management. Did you ever experience your child spending all their allowances at school and ask you for more money to buy additional stuff such as Pokemon cards?
You can try this simple technique that I have learnt from the course, summarized in three words: Spend, Save and Share. These are three broad techniques which you can use to remind your child to make choices with their money. You can make the above money jars using recycled containers (PS: I used the empty containers after finishing up the Chinese New Year goodies).
With the money jars, you can show your child how to allocate the given allowance into different containers and also help them understand what the purpose of each container is. Here are the three categories:
#1 Spend
Buy things that you need and want now.
#2 Save
Set money aside to buy things in the future.
#3 Share
Donate money to help people or buy something to share with your siblings or friends.