I was thinking today as I have these “piggy bank” type of storage for loose change as since childhood I have just had a habit of putting spare change into them. As you can imagine this aided my ability to save money where it just kept piling up to the point where when it came to emptying it out there would be like fifty dollars worth of change there. Now as you may know pennies have been abolished here. So for loose change the smallest amount would be five cents with the highest being two dollars.
I have one figure that is actually crammed full of one and two dollar coins to the point where if I was to add everything up I wouldn’t be surprised if I have like at least two hundred dollars worth of change stored up. When you think about it this probably isn’t the most financially savvy thing to do as it would probably be better in the bank earning interest as an example. It made me wonder, do piggy banks actually teach you bad habits on how to manage your money?
In terms of deciding whether to spend it on random junk or simply saving it I would say it works good in that way to help you to keep your money. But it really doesn’t teach you to find ways to be pro-active with it such as finding ways to make more money with it. I would imagine this would be a useful thing to learn as a child too. Maybe adults feel kids can’t manage their money very well period and so there really isn’t a universal way to nurture this huh?
Although I would wonder if you would actually have the same motivation as kid to just directly dump loose change into a bank as in many ways the amount seems way too small to motivate anyone to do so. The only other thing I could think of at the moment is for like every child to open up a lemonade stand of sort. That way at least you get the experience of make and investing money as opposed to just leaving it to do nothing.