Introduce the Kids to Banking

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Our household accounts at area banks have been taken over, transferred, or sold repeatedly, and we have dealt with the parade of ever-changing corporate logos for the sake of convenience and plain old inertia. However, I wanted the kids to know the old-fashioned satisfaction of walking into a bricks-and-mortar bank and making a deposit. At some point, they need to see that money does not grow on trees and also come to understand the link between legal tender – those green bills in their birthday cards – and the number on a bank statement.

The conference room/cold drink/new ink pen package had the kids giddy with feeling grown-up. I even played big-shot myself by whipping out my checkbook and writing each of them a $25 check as seed money to help them start their new habit of saving. (Of course, these checks were accompanied by a lecture on the importance of being responsible, setting aside money, etc., etc.) This gave my son a grand total of $36 to deposit while his similarly situated sister had saved over $200. Guess which one we’ll designate as executor of our will one day?

The bank has an onsite coin counting machine, so now they can dump their spare change and turn around to deposit it directly into their accounts (Chuck E. Cheese tokens will be sorted out automatically). Best of all was the moment they got to stuff the cylinder with their jumble of dollars, tooth fairy money, and checks and then send it away via the pneumatic tube. Admit it, isn’t it fun even as an adult to see that cylinder sucked up into the ceiling?

Finally, the kids were given t-shirts and plastic piggy banks, and that was enough for them to decide banks are cooler than dresser drawers for stashing away money.

Have they bought into the idea of saving their money? Will they ever learn the power of compound interest? I don’t know. Just last week my son used some of his money to buy an ionic (?) neclace from Dick’s Sporting Goods, even though I am certain we could have knotted a shoelace around his neck to provide the same effect. But this is their money, not mine, and they have to learn how to handle it. Better to learn now than when grocery or rent money is at stake.

If your kids are old enough to print their names and can earn an allowance, I recommend you help them set up their own accounts with you as custodian. They will need social security cards to establish their taxpayer ID as well as e-mail addresses and passwords to enjoy online banking (which amounts to their being able to see their balance online). Of all the things you can do to prepare them for the “real world,” this may be one of the most important. Let’s help our kids understand money so that they can make the best use of their resources, no matter the economic circumstances (nationally or individually) they inherit.