Teaching the merits of Saving & Value

Benjamin and I have been talking about saving money and not going into debt.  I'm trying to give him some activities and examples that "hits him where he lives."  In other words, I'm trying to help him understand money from the eyes of a 12 year old boy.  I've got my work cut out for me!

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For example, I was trying to make the point how it is a good idea to save your money versus spend it and that the bank or lending institution will pay you interest for 'borrowing' your money.  We give Benjamin an allowance for doing some farm chores.  Some things he is not paid for as there are jobs that you are expected to do just for being part of the family.  As an added incentive, we give him 50 cents for every dozen eggs we sell.  He's saved some money over the years and it is sitting in a savings account.  I wanted to show him the concept of compound interest so we got out his latest bank statement to show him what he's earned in interest.

Benjamin: So Dad, how often does the bank pay me for keeping my money in the savings account?
Dad: Well, they pay you once a quarter - that's once every 3 months.
Benjamin: How much did they pay me for the last quarter.
Dad: Hmmm.  Let's check your bank statement.  Right here, they made a quarterly interest payment to you for 12 cents.
Benjamin: (long silence)  Umm, Dad, can I use twenty dollars of my savings to buy a Star Wars LEGO set I've had my eyes on?

This is going to be harder than I thought, but honestly, the incentive is not there to save.  With inflation you are losing money.  Even a kid knows it's probably smarter to spend it.  We did discuss risk and reward and I showed him that you can definitely make a higher rate of return in the stock market, but the risks of loss are much greater.

Benjamin is motivated, however, and figured out that collecting cans can be a money making venture.  He researched and found that it takes 31 cans to make a pound of aluminum and that the going rate is $0.40 per pound, so it takes about 80 cans to make a dollar.  I don't know about where you live, but people throw many "dollars" out of their window around my house and Benjamin aims to pick them up and convert them into profit.  Cha ching!

So he asked me to go walking down the road with him yesterday, pulling a wagon and picking up cans.  Off we went.  As we walked about a mile down the road and back, picking up cans, we had a good chance to talk about life, how home school is going and we also observed many things, including:

#1 Why do people litter?  I don't have an answer to that question, but I remember when someone threw paper out of the car window and it fell at the feet of this guy and it made him sad (Remember that?):

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#2 A neighbor of ours has a serious erosion problem going on:

Losing his land

In our area both the Parish as well as individuals use Round-up to keep the fence rows and ditches clean so they don't have to mow it, but the roots of those grasses hold the soil together.  The absence of those roots mean that with every rain, more and more topsoil erodes and is washed into the roadside ditches.  It won't be long before the fence falls over.  What a mess!  If I paid for my land, I'd like to keep it, thank you very much.

#3 Goldenrods: 

Goldenrods in front of the house

The first thing I thought of when I saw these was allergies.  After reading about them, though, on two separate websites, I found that the reputation of the poor Goldenrod has been ruined through guilt by association.  The real culprit of allergy problems is ragweed and Goldenrod and ragweed often occupy the same areas.  I don't have a good sense of smell, but Benjamin says goldenrod smells good.  He went to sniff it and a bee almost flew up his nose.  Bees were all over the place gathering up the pollen.

Native Americans chewed the leaves of a young goldenrod to relieve sore throats and chewed the roots to relieve toothaches.  Who knew?  I have a pharmacy in the roadside ditch across from my house!

Full of flowers and sticky pollen - our bees love this stuff!

After about 30 minutes we collected about 93 cans or roughly $1.16.  

Precious metals

We crushed the cans as we pick them up to conserve space.  Once we got home, we dumped them out and counted them.

93 crushed aluminum cans

Not a whole lot of value there.  Neither me or Benjamin will be getting rich off of what we picked up in the ditch in 30 minutes.  The real value, though, came in time spent with him along the way - a great investment in my book.