Teaching kids money management with the Moonjar

In every news cycle there is commentary on the economy. From spending to saving, the awareness of how and why we spend money is forefront in our minds. Educating children on how to save and spend their hard earned dollars and cents will help create a fiscally responsible future generation.

As the holiday spending spree comes to a forefront, the idea of spending and saving is an important lesson to learn. Our family is discussing money matters with Moonjar.

The premise of the Moonjar is simple. Based on a John D. Rockfeller's family anecdote, each family has three "jars" for the children's allowances. The total allowance is divided between the three categories (jars) savings, spending and charity. The parents and kids discuss how the money is divided. Each Moonjar comes with a passbook so that everyone can track where and when the money goes in and out.

For example, you give your child $10 a week for his allowance. How do you divide it three ways? Maybe the child gets $6 to spend, $3 save and $1 to charity. Each jar gets a contribution, but you decide on the percentages.

Over time, kids will hopefully grasp that they cannot spend more than the money that they have in the jar. For example, my son wants a new DS game. The game costs $29.99. He only has $15 in his spending jar. He must continue to build his spending jar to achieve the amount that he needs. We do not allow the kids to dip into the savings jar for "fun" purchases.

The charity jar works well in our house too. Usually around Thanksgiving the kids come home asking for pennies for pies. They are able to give their own money to the charity effort rather than saving - mom can I have what's in your purse?  It creates a sense of responsibility that will hopefully grow over time.

Moonjar can be purchased at Little Zen Minds for under $20.

I believe that teaching kids about money at an early age is imperative. We can't talk big economics or fiscal cliffs, but we can talk about simple spending and saving. Hopefully, by the time they head off to college, I will have helped them create a responsible consumer.



Disclosure: I received this product to review. All opinions are mine.

23 comments:

  1. I've been looking for something like this for my kids. All the other systems have three seperate jars and take up way too much space. This looks exactly what I really want. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. My kids each have two piggy banks. One where all of their money goes and they can not spend it. Every so often, we go to the bank and 25% of it goes to their savings accounts and the rest goes to their "spending bank" and they can do whatever they'd like with it.

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  3. My daughter could teach me a thing or two about saving lol. Neat idea.

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  4. Cute idea! It sounds like a fun approach to teaching them how to spend wisely.

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  5. Thanks for the link to purchase the jar, too. Love this idea

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  6. Wow, I'm a grown-up but I think I could use this too!

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  7. This is a great idea, and I love the fact that it teaches children about donating to charity.I think its important to teach kids about this at an earlyage.

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  8. Great idea. I like the idea that it's all in one too.

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  9. This is such a good idea! It makes teaching your kids money responsibility so easy! I definitely want my children to understand the importance of giving and saving. Going to check this out right now...

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  10. That's a great idea! I really want my children to learn about saving money!

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  11. I don't have kids but I'm thinking this would be a great B-Day gift for my God son!! He's 7 and extremely spoiled, maybe it's time Auntie Sharon taught him about saving AND giving back....Thanks!!

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  12. That's a really great idea. My son is 5 and I really need to get him to understand the concept of money and it doesn't grow on trees... He really takes things for granted!

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  13. WOW! I love the concept ;) Dividing it into savings, spending and charity are great ideas!

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  14. I really like this idea. My daughter has a penny bank. But I like this way better. I especially like the part about charity. We do tithing at our house, but my daughter doesn't really get it. Plus I think she would enjoy it more if she were using her own money for charity. Plus during the holidays it would be nice instead of her robbing my blind for the food banks, so she can win a prize.

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  15. I like this is all in one container so it doesn't take up a lot of space

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  16. This is GREAT!! I wish my parents had a tool like this to help me learn more about finances. I'm not a financial WRECK, but rely on my husband to help me budget more than I should.

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  17. this is awesome. I needed something to help with my kids. thanks again.

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  18. What a great way to teach the children the value of money and putting off the instant gratification. Thanks for sharing

    trishden948(at)yahoo(dot)com

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  19. I love this idea! I do need something like this for my kids!

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  20. This is a great way to teach children about money and saving. I love that with this system you can teach children about charity. Thanks for sharing!

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  21. This is a great way to teach children how to save, but in a fun, challenging way!

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