The standard advice parents of young children hear regarding pocket money is the "three jar system" -- one for spending, one for saving, and one for sharing (or giving). Whether the child's money comes from an allowance, from doing chores, or from birthdays, we are encouraged to have our children divide their coins and bills between the three jars in a predefined way: some suggest an equal three-part split; others suggest 10% to sharing and the rest divided evenly between saving and spending; and yet others suggest leaving it up to the child. Pinterest, of course, gives dozens of ideas for making and decorating beautiful money jars.
But just what do money jars mean to a young child, and how well do they work?
I first tried money jars with Lasse when he turned four years old. We carefully divided a small shoebox into three sections. He loved watching me cut slots into the lid and glue in dividers, and he enthusiastically decorated the box with a metallic gold pen. He listened as I explained the three sections. And he carefully named each of his small handful of coins as he put them, one by one, into the slots. Nickel, dime, dime, quarter, nickel. So far, so good. But almost immediately afterwards, it started to unravel: he wanted to take the lid off, take out his coins, and start over -- naming the coins, turning them over in his palms, and then listening to the clink-plonk they made as the fell into the box. That clink-plonk followed me through the house for days.
I quickly realised he was too young for money jars as they are usually thought of: there was no rational decision-making behind which coins went in which slot, no desire to leave the coins in their compartments, and he treated the entire contraption more as an activity than as a moneybox. What had gone wrong? In a nutshell, Lasse was simply too young to grasp the abstract concepts behind the box. Since then, I've thought more about money jars and what they represent to young children.
Saving.
Lasse loves to save -- you might even call it hoarding -- piles of small things: rocks, shells, marbles, paperclips, and, yes, coins. They are his treasures and he keeps them in all sorts of containers in his bedroom. You can’t walk through his room without risking impaling your foot on one of his treasures, but he has them all memorized, so moving them creates difficulties too. Nonetheless — my challenge is to get him to understand that coins are somehow different than his other treasures: coins cannot be freely picked up outside like rocks or shells, and nor are they toys like his marbles.
I began by introducing three ideas which he is now beginning to understand: first, that money has to be made (that is, earned or made through investments); second, that money has the power to be turned into almost anything else (through the act of saving and purchasing); and, third, that money can grow (through investments). But here's the rub, as I soon discovered: saving and/or investing money, with or without a specific goal in mind, requires a grasp of an even trickier concept — time. Talking to Lasse about time is a bit like conversing with the Chesire Cat. Today, yesterday and tomorrow are (usually) firm in his mind, and he is beginning to grasp the concepts of weeks and months and years, but it is all very loose.
Spending.
Whilst spending is certainly the easiest of the three "jars" to grasp, still it is ridden with tricky concepts: to understand spending requires not only some ability in coin and number recognition and arithmetic, it also requires a more subtle understanding of value. I have been working with Lasse by pointing out items in the grocery flyer and talking about how much they cost, and by looking at Lego sets with him, and again talking about cost. He counts his coins and tells me whether he could buy a specific item or not, and, if so, how many of that item he could afford. Four dollars in the palm of his hand? It's enough for a big bag of apples or several pounds of bananas, but not for even the smallest Lego kit. I also try to talk to him about value: would he get more pleasure from buying a small Lego kit now or waiting until he has more money and then buying a bigger kit? Whilst we are making some progress, it is all too abstract. Plus, I am uneasy with encouraging him to spend money (a point for another post…).
Giving.
Here, I am stumped. Giving to a good cause, by definition, requires selecting a good cause. And Lasse’s idea of good causes is… not fully formed. Or, perhaps more fairly, different from mine — and whilst that it not necessarily a bad thing, it does give me pause to wonder if I haven’t explained the ideas behind giving money very well. I think I’ll leave this for another post, in part because I need to think more on it myself.
It has been a year since we tried our money jars. Now that Lasse is five, a year older and with a better understanding of money, I have wondered if we ought to try again. But before we do, I need to put more thought into the questions outlined above.
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