Piggy's Piggy Bank

     I believe that every child should have a piggy bank from the day he or she was born.  Piggy actually had hers a month before she was born.  Every time Hubby or I found loose change (not quarters though, those are for laundry) we would plop it into her piggy bank.  This is the perfect way to save money for her in the future.  Who likes to use a bunch of dimes, nickels, and pennies to pay for something?  Granted, we do throw in the occasional dollar that was found on the floor or in the laundry, but the majority is still dimes, nickels, and pennies.  Since those random dollars are out of sight, they soon become out of mind!

     Eventually, that piggy bank has to get full, right?  So what is there to do with that full thing?  Get another piggy bank?  I beg to differ.  If that was the case, then by now, I would have had a plethora of piggy banks taking over every room of the house (my mom did this for me and my brother, too.  It's kind of where I got the belief of having a piggy bank).  Instead, the thing to do is open a bank account.

     "A baby with a bank account?!  Why?!"  Well, why not?  By the time she's old enough to start working or go to college (depending on when we decide to give it to her), there will be enough saved to drastically cut down costs.  If she's old enough to have a job, she should be responsible enough to buy the things she needs (work or school clothes, school supplies, food, gas, etc.) and wants (hair done, movies, fun clothes, jewelry, laptop, etc.)  If she happens to spend all of her money on shoes and song downloads and needs money for gas, sure, we'll give the money to her, but her next paycheck, she's going to pay us back.  This way, she'll be ready for when she's out on her own to balance the wants and needs.  If she just goes to college and doesn't get a job before then, that money can drastically bring down the cost of school!

     Like I said earlier, my mom did this with both me and my brother.  I knew about my account when I was eight (?) years old.  My piggy bank (at the time it was actually a one-gallon water cooler jug with duct tape with a slit as the top.  It's amazing how I didn't break into the thing to get candy money) was over flowing so my mom took me and the jug...and half of another jug to the bank.  She explained to me that when I'm old enough, the account becomes all mine and I get to do what I want with the money.  Now, fast forward to when I was 13 and had my first cell phone, I woke up one morning to find my phone had fallen off of my nightstand and into a cup of water on the floor.  Being a phone of the mid 00's, it was done for.  The way my mother put it "the first phone was a gift, this one you're paying for" and she took the money for it out of my account.  About a year later, my brother lost his phone when we were at a hockey game.  Since I was moving to my dad's within a few months, my brother was going to get my phone and my mom did the same thing with him that she did with me, except this time, since it was my phone and used, she took the price of my phone when it was new, cut the price in half, and took that amount out of his account and put it into my account.  It was as if he paid me for the phone.  Awesome work, mom.

     I finally got the card for my account when I went off to college.  The first month, I used it to get random snacks, go to the movies, and get clothes.  I then realized that I had gone from $400 to $100.  My mom was putting $50 in my account twice a month.  So, what did I do?  With that $50, I put $25 to save and $25 to spend.  If by the next time I got the $50 and I had $50 or more for spending, I would leave only $25 for me to spend and the rest went to be saved.  By the next year, I had $700 back into my account!  Unfortunately though, that year wasn't so good for me and saving money because some stuff happened (it's too long to go into detail) and I didn't have a way to get gas money to go to and from school every weekend (and I had to because of the school's policy...plus I didn't want to pay $3 per load of laundry every weekend).  I tried to find a job, but there weren't any places that were hiring or they wanted people with more experience.  So by the end of that year, I went from my hard saved $700 to a mere $50.  My mom did continue to put in that $50 twice a month (thank God for that, otherwise I would have run out of gas money half way through the year!) and I was able to get $300 saved up before I got married.  Once I got married, that's when she stopped the $50.  I was sad to see it go, but I understood why it went.

     Anyways, enough story telling.  Here's my plan for Piggy's piggy bank: keep putting change in.  Once there is $100, open up a bank account for her.  Continue to put change in.  Every time she gets money for her birthday, Christmas, or whatever, put it in that piggy bank, but once she's 12, half will go into the piggy bank and the other half will be hers to decide what to do with it.  Once piggy bank is full (or there's $250, whichever comes first), take it to the bank.  Ta-da!  And to keep her dad and I from spending it all, we aren't going to get a card for it until we give the account to her.

     Now, at first, I was really hesitant about setting the amounts to $100 and $250.  I just kept thinking "That's a lot of change!" but then, I remembered "Hey, we're also putting in the dollars we find on the floor and in the laundry!  This won't take that long!".  I was right too.  She's not even two months old yet, and she already has over $60 in her piggy bank!  The change in the truck isn't even in there yet (and believe me, there's a lot of change in the truck!)  She'll have money built up in no time!