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Last week, I told you about one of our monkeys and his two different money break-through’s in one week. Which was totally awesome for us! This week, I want to tell you about another one of our monkeys and her break-through. It is just amazing to us that they are really starting to understand this stuff now, and get excited about it!
Earning Money
One of the other monkeys, Presley, has really been trying to earn money to boost up her savings account. Not that she has anything in mind to spend it on, but she wants to make sure that she can put as much away as possible now. And she likes to help out, so that is a bonus.
Volunteering
Both she and the Myles came to an event I was contracting for and volunteered with me for the bulk of the event. This was including breakdown of the event, which didn’t end until 10:30pm. Now, I know that is kind of late for a 9 year old and a 12 year old, but it was a weekend and they REALLY wanted to help. So we just couldn’t say no.
Not only did they stay and help but they helped out more than some of our high school and college volunteers. I got a lot of compliments on how hard they worked and what great volunteers they were.
Mom’s Little Helper
On top of that event, I had to run another contracting event a few days later. Presley wanted to come help me run it so badly. This one was a catering event and since she has helped me with those before, I knew that she could handle it. Plus, there was no school the next day, so I let her come along.
She helped me out so much more than most adults do. Part of that is probably because she doesn’t have a phone to sit around and play on (insert eye roll and frustrated sigh). But the other part is that she sees how hard I work and she wants to mimick what I do.
The cherry on top for her was that I told her I would give her some money for her savings account. That pretty much sold it!
And what a fantastic job she did at both events! What was even more thrilling for me, though, was when I took her to the bank to deposit the money in her savings account. Afterwards, I handed her the receipt with the current balance and watched her eyes light up like the Aurora Borealis.
It was really so COOL!
Bragging Rights
She came home and bragged to Reese about how much she has in her account versus him. Which I can’t say that I was thrilled about, since her delivery was a bit taunting. But, it did seem to get him to think a bit more about how little he is trying to earn money compared to the other two kids.
And he should be thinking about this because he is the oldest of all of our children and will need a vehicle first. I reiterated that to him just this week when we were in a discussion about how he has a hard time blowing every single penny that runs across his fingers.
Saving
Last week I told you that Myles agreed to let us keep his $100 until we opened up a savings account for him. Which was fantastic news! So we took all 5 kids down to SECU to work on getting accounts for the 3 that don’t have them yet.
All of the kids were excited about this, especially because I told them that we would give them all $20 to start the accounts with. Since Myles already had his $100 and I was giving him another $20 for helping out around the house and volunteering, he would be starting his account with $140 smackers. He thought this was SO cool!
We told them that if they wanted to keep earning money, then we would have plenty of opportunities for them to do so. Although, we would like for them to do things for other family members to earn money also. If they do that, we told them that we would match what they make and put all of it in their savings accounts.
But the deal is that they can’t withdrawal any of the money. They have to leave it in their savings accounts to continue to earn interest.
Mo’ Money!
We also told them that once their accounts were larger, we would open Money Market accounts for them since those earn higher interest on their money. They all seemed to be on board with this idea, even though I am not sure if the younger 2 monkeys fully grasp this concept yet.
The lone holdout still seems to be Reese. So we are going to continue to work on him and figure out a way to get through to him. Parenting can really be a challenge sometimes!
I know that we are both happy about 2 of our monkeys understanding and getting excited about our money lessons. Now if only we can get the oldest one to just get it, that would be phenomenal progress!
What are some of your stories of your monkeys finally understanding the money lessons you have been teaching them?
