Encouraging Children to Save

I am a firm believer in saving is a learned skill and that as parents it is our duty to teach our children money management and how to save.

Coinstar has launched the Dust off your Pennies campaign, encouraging consumers to stop banishing their loose change to the backs of sofas and bottoms of drawers. This comes in light of a new survey that revealed just under 70% of households have loose change lying around their home that never make it to a savings jar, equating to £60 a year per household on average and a shocking accumulative £1.5 billion in the UK! 

This could prove just the incentive to get your children saving.  Why not set them the task to search your house looking for loose change!  

My top tips for encouraging children to save

1. Set a good example - talk about saving and how you save up and plan for important purchases.
2. Make it visual.  This is why saving pennies in a jam jar or glass bottle is so effective.  Children can see how much they are saving and it makes them want to save more.
3. Incentive it - why not pay interest on their savings or offer bonus when they reach a certain stage.
4. Set a goal - give them something achievable to focus on.  This will obviously vary from child to child.
5. Take it out of their hands.  My boys only get half of their pocket money in their hands, the rest goes straight into the bank. 

I would love to know your thoughts on getting children to save and how you do it.  I believe that the more we talk about money with children the better equipped they will be to manage their money when they grow up.

My boys have both used the coinstar booths and really enjoyed watching how much their saving added up to, so I am more than happy to blog about them.

If you’ve got coins you want to change into spending money,  you can find your nearest Coinstar kiosk here, http://www.coinstar.co.uk/coinmachine