The Money Jar

I use my credit card for just about everything. I confessed this a couple years ago. I use it in order to accumulate points that I can then exchange for gift cards to my favorite stores. In the past, I have bought gift cards to Target to use for necessities like toiletries, to Home Depot for pseudo-necessities like supplies for making small home repairs, and to Pottery Barn for luxuries like a king-sized quilt set with three matching shams. This made all of these things {the fun stuff and the necessary stuff} free to us.

It was free to us because we have never, ever paid interest on this credit card.

I know that this wouldn’t work for everyone. For some folks, credit cards aren’t “real.” Some people need cold, hard cash for their purchases to be concrete enough for them to keep track of their finances properly. However, Si and I have never found this to be a problem. It probably works because we don’t call him Depression-Era Dad for nothing, and I don’t enjoy shopping all that much.

Recently, though, I started wondering how all of this was impacting the children. They are still small enough that I’m not sure what their spending tendencies are going to be. E. seems to be disciplined enough in general, and he has saved up and paid cash for toys in the past, so I find that encouraging. But the other children are a complete mystery.

Even though we have never paid interest on our credit cards, our children are watching and they don’t know those details. All they know is that Mom needs something, pulls out a card, and poof! the deal is done.

This is not the healthiest view of finances to cultivate.

So I started trying to think of a solution that would give them a concrete example, without my having to give up my precious points.

Enter The Money Jar.

I put a number of items on Craig’s List when we moved. They weren’t going to bring in a whole lot–around twenty dollars here and there. But we saw it as an opportunity. After all, we have the backyard microhomestead project making its way into our lives. What a great chance for the children to learn to save and pay cash

One evening, we sold one of our items. Si brought out a Mason jar and put it on the dining table during dinner. He asked the children if they could guess what we would use it for. And then he explained our family project. The children already knew that there were plans in the works for an orchard of around fifteen trees. Si told them that the jar was going to contain our tree money. Each time we sold an item or came across extra cash, we would put it into the jar. When we were ready {we still need irrigation before we can plant}, we would take that cash and buy whatever trees we could afford. We would keep saving what we could until we had purchased all the trees for the orchard.

A benefit of making trees the goal is that it doesn’t take all that long to save for one. The average sapling costs between twenty and twenty-five dollars.

The children got excited when we put money in the jar and explained that we already had enough to buy one apple tree. Within a couple days, we saved for two more trees {Craig’s List has been good to us}. Our oldest got excited, went to his room, and donated nine cents to the project. We had told the children that they could put their own money in the jar if they liked, but they are little and the focus of the project is really for them to witness Si and I saving for something.

They say that the lessons children learn are often caught rather than taught. What I am hoping is that as we use the Money Jar {we plan to have new goals once the orchard is in}, the children catch the concepts that make up proper financial management. In time, maybe they will have their own money jars where they separate out some of their own money to save for something extra-special.