Do your kids spend all their allowance in school or save some of the money in a coin bank? Well, most kids spend all their money and might even ask their parents for more! Only a small percentage of children actually save their money in a coin bank. But there’s a smaller (yet more impressive?) number of students who actually earn money while they are still in school.
A 7-year-old boy recently went viral after his mother shared his ‘extra’ activities in school. On her Facebook account, Malaysian mom Puan Hasmi Samsuddin shared how she thought her son was taking money in school because he came home with twice the money she sent him that morning.
Photo credit: Puan Hasmi Samsuddin / Facebook
According to Samsuddin, she had given her son RM2 ($0.50) as pocket money that morning. It was the second day of school and her son was already learning a lot of new things. But she did not expect that he would learn how to grow his money at that young age.
The boy who is in Primary 1 (Grade 1) came back home with RM4 ($1) – and he actually wanted to save his money! Samsuddin was rather surprised when the boy asked where his piggy bank is because she first thought he did not spend his money on snacks.
But when she saw that he had twice the amount she gave him, she asked whether he took his friends’ money. Of course, this mom was surprised to learn that her son earned the money by selling grasshoppers!
Yet she was not happy about him earning some extra cash.
“I sent my son to school to study, not sell grasshoppers. For no reason he received a smack-down from me,” she wrote.
Netizens did not agree with her response, however. Many believe that she should have been proud that her son is becoming an independent kid who knows how to support himself. That would certainly come in handy in the future when he is bigger…
Teaching Kids to Save Money
Saving money might be difficult but it is a habit that we can teach kids so they can start doing so even at a young age. Here are tips to help kids save money:
- Discuss needs versus wants
- Set savings goals
- Provide a place to save
- Track their spending
- Offer rewards and incentives