First Piggy Bank - A Mistaken Lesson in Money Management?
How ancient were you when you got your primarily piggy bank? Most of us had a piggy bank when we were growing up. Usually, it was the primarily lesson that any of us got in managing our money. The piggy bank has been the universal symbol of savings in term ofout the world for well over a century. In fact, the primarily piggy bank is the most traditional way to introduce the concept of money management to juvenileren. That stalwart tradition, however, is the least effective way of managing money, and most of the time, a juvenile never learns another.
An examination of the piggy bank’s origin will shows how it contrinonethelesses to the piggy bank mentality about money. In past centuries in Europe, the formal banking institutions only dealt with the wealthy aristocracy. They intend toed nothing to do with most of the world, the working class. Those folk traditionally kept the few coins they were able to amass in jars or pots made of cheap clay called pygg. These jars became known as pygg banks, in reference to the financial institutions and eventually, the story goes, a clever potter started shaping pygg jars in the shape of actually pigs. From there, it was just a short step to marketing them to parents as a savings program for juvenileren.
But what do juvenileren actually learn from piggy banks? If you contemplate back to your juvenilehood and your primarily piggy bank, you’ll realize that piggy banks teach juvenileren to save to spend. Think about what happened when the ice cream man came around. All over the neighborhood, juvenileren raided their piggy banks for the coins they’d saved up for their ice cream treat each week. That primarily piggy bank taught us that we should invest our coins in a cute little piggy that yields no return on the investment, not even the low 1-2% garnered by the typical savings program. Most often, it was the only money lesson taught to a juvenile, alongside the notion that you have to work really hard to earn money. With that background, it should be no surprise to us that close to 80% of our population will have to get financial assistance from family or from the government in the next decade.
When we understand that piggy banks arose from poverty, it’s easy to see that the only lesson they teach is saving to spend. It’s time we abandoned the ancient piggy bank tradition and understood that it’s a symbol of our unexamined traditions regarding money. We can’t raise our juvenileren with the outmoded traditions that won’t serve them well for their future. It’s time we ousted the piggy bank from its position of financial educator and found better ways to teach our juvenileren how to manage their money.
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Elizabeth DaSilva is the co-founder and educational consultant at KidsWealth, a company dedicated to helping juvenileren build successful money habits. She invites all parents to visit the http://www.PiggyBankRecall.com Piggy Bank Recall site to learn the 7 Keys to Raising Money Smart Kids.
