Stephanie of the former Mirror, Mirror recently returned from a family vacation in Disney World and sent me this great idea. All of us have struggled with how to teach our kids about money and how to squash the "gimmes," especially when we're on vacation. Stephanie came up with a great idea:
As we prepared for our vacation, Rob and I discussed how to handle the kid's spending money. We ended up putting all of their money in the bank and taking with us on the trip the amount in the form of monopoly money.
To get the kids involved, they each decorated envelopes and counted out their play money. Now we could take this play money with us everywhere on our trip and not worry about losing it, having it stolen or tying it up in gift cards or in our case Disney Dollars. When the kids would shop they would be given their envelopes and have to give us the play money for the item before we went to check out.
By having control of their money they seemed to make more thoughtful decisions. Several times they put things back after they saw how much money they would have to give us. When we got home we simply withdrew the money they spent from their bank accounts. This system also kept Rob and I accountable since we didn't spend our budgeted money on our kids' desires.
Well there it is. Maybe someone could use it. I know it worked really well for us.
That definitely works for me! Visit Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer for more tips and ideas than one mom could possibly use in a lifetime.
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5 comments:
That's a good one!
That's a interesting idea. I may have to combine it with the "house bank" that we currently run when we go on long trips and such. *S* Great tip!
Great idea! My son (of course) wants everything he sees when we're on vacation--I love the idea of giving him a taste of both independence and limits.
That is genius!
I like this idea! We're hoping to plan a Disney trip in the next year or so ~ this will come in handy!
Thanks!
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