The 10 Day Family Savings Challenge
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A great life skill to teach your kids is how to save money. The things you teach them about money will stay with them for life, so it’s important to teach them all that you can at an age-appropriate level. And what better way to strengthen your family’s bond than to save as a family. Let’s make saving a family tradition by setting a yearly goal and making a plan to reach it. It all starts with a conversation! Here’s a family activity that will help you save money and encourage money conversations!
The 10 Day Family Savings Challenge
Day 1: Create a Budget
Creating a budget together as a family ensures that everyone is on the same page when it comes to spending and saving money. When you do it together, everyone has a sense of ownership that helps them to stay focus on the family’s financial goal. This also helps you teach your children about money so when it’s time for them to do this on their own it’s not foreign.
Day 2: Budget Friendly Dinner
I think this one is the most fun of them all. Have the kids take over dinner. Give them a budget, let them plan the meal, take them to the store to purchase the items, and let them cook it. This will give them a taste of what you do all the time to provide food for the family. They’ll soon realize that it’s not as easy as it seems and saving money to afford more for food is definitely important to have more options. This also allows you to sit back and enjoy not cooking for the night.
Day 3: Find Items to Resell Online
This is one of my favorite things to do. It’s super fun and it makes you money. You have to choose a number of items for everyone to sell. For example; three. Everyone needs to find three personal items that they no longer want or need, in good condition to sell online. Here are a list of sites to sell your junk or unwanted items:
Facebook Marketplace
Mercari
Ebay
Craigslist
OfferUp
You can even make it into a game where the person who makes the most money with their three items, win a prize (something free though like no chores for a week).
Day 4: Instead of Going Out, Play Board Games Inside
Whether you have a small or large family, going out to do anything is starting to cost a fortune. In order to still have fun times with your family, you can think of games to play at home that are free. This will save you money on expensive family outings and perhaps allow you to save for a real family vacation.
Day 5: Compete on Saving Energy
Make it a game to have your family do things around the house to lower the utility bill. You can save big by doing the following in the house:
Turning down or off the thermostat - In the cold seasons challenge your family to put on more clothes to stay warm and turn down the thermostat. You can do outfit contests, fashion shows, and who wore it best to encourage them to bundle up in the cold.
Turning off the faucet while brushing your teeth - Kids are known to let the water run as they brush their teeth. This reminds me of that Barney song, “while I’m brushing my teeth and having so much fun, I never let the water run, no I never let the water run”. Every time I brush my teeth I have to sing that song to remind me to turn the water off. Teach your kids to do the same.
Turn off unused lights and unplug things you don’t need daily - Although turning off the lights won’t save you thousands of dollars, it is a good habit to turn them off if you’re not using them. And the money you do save surely adds up.
Day 6: Save for a Word or Phrase
Every family has that one word or phrase that they say all the time. Make it fun and have everyone put money in a jar every time they say the word or phrase. This is sort of like the Swear Jar where if someone says a bad word, they need to pay up. Instead of it being a bad word, make it fun and use words your family uses all the time.
Decorate a jar and put it somewhere everyone can see it. The jar should have the word on it so everyone knows what they can’t say.
Day 7: Play the Young Entrepreneur Game
Growing up, my family did not have a lot of money. As a kid, we used to live in the YMCA for about a year. We were barely making it around that time. My mother would go to the store, buy a box of chocolates (M&Ms, Reese’s, Butter Fingers, etc) and give me and my sister a box. We would walk around the neighborhood selling candy for $1 each. The box of candy was about $13 and there were about 30 candy bars in each box. That means, each box we sold, we had a profit of $17 per box. One box for the both of us and we just made a profit of $34.
I know my mother was doing it to make a little extra money, but to us it was so much fun. Eventually we made friends in the YMCA and all of us kids were doing it. We would change up locations and go to the more wealthier neighborhoods to make the most money. Sometimes people didn’t buy the candy and just donated, so we made even more money.
You can have your children do the same thing. They don’t just need to sale candy for their schools. You can go to Costco and buy a box of anything and have them go around the neighborhood.
Here are a few more ideas for Young Entrepreneurs:
Lemonade Stand (this never gets old)
Car washing
Lawn care
Snow removal
Running simple errands
Babysitting
Housesitting
Dog walking
Pay per task (this is where people in the neighborhood would pay them to do simple tasks around the house or outside the house, like putting together a shelf, creating an excel sheet, setting up a computer, rearranging furniture, etc)
Gum ball vending machine
Day 8: Clip Coupons Together
Coupons help people to save money, so why not start out by teaching your kids how to use coupons? Let your family help you cut the coupons out of the Sunday newspaper. With each new coupon you all cut, explain to the family what that specific coupon does and how much it saves you.
Listed below are some ways to get your family involved in the use of coupons:
Make your grocery list and allow your family to find any coupons that correspond to the items on the list. Allow them to cut the coupons out for you (if they are old enough to handle scissors).
Take all of the coupons to the store with you. Then, with each new purchase and addition to your cart, allow your family to find the corresponding coupon to the item.
Show the family how you organize your coupons. Once they see how effective this can be, they may come to realize just how valuable coupons are in saving you money.
Make it a game. You know I love a good game. Have some already precut coupons available for your family to use. Then, allow them to go into the pantry and find the items that could correspond to the coupons they have in their possession. Whoever gets the most matches of coupon to item, wins!
When your items are placed on the conveyor belt to be scanned and checked out, allow your kids to hand the cashier the coupons. This will teach them that the use of coupons should be part of your shopping routine all the time.
Day 9: No Spend Day
On this day, no one in the family is allowed to spend any money on anything. The best way to do this is to let everyone know when that day is coming up, so they aren’t shocked. This is not a reminder to buy everything before that day, but more of a mental preparation. This will help your family stop the impulse buying and take at least 24 hours to think about something before they purchase it.
Day 10: Utilize the Buyerarchy of Needs
The Buyerarchy of Needs is a spin on “Maslow’s Hierachy of Needs”. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory of motivation which states that five categories of human needs dictate an individual’s behavior.
The Buyerarchy of Needs is a visual guide to remind you of your other options besides buying something new. It helps you save money and come up with innovative ideas.
The idea is to work your way from the bottom to the top when you are thinking of purchasing something new. If all else fails, you can always purchase it, but do not jump right to that option.
There’s this amazing app called the Buy Nothing Project that allows you to communicate with your neighbors and share things freely. You can use that sight to ask for and find items you need for free. If you’re feeling generous, you can also give to your neighbors on there as well. It is the world's biggest gift economy, being used in communities around the world.
