My kids are having a conversation in the next room that I'm proud to overhear. My pride swells.
Son - "Sydney did you know if you put like 8 million dollars in the bank and left it alone for like 3 years, you'd have another million dollars?"
Daughter - "what? no way! why?"
Son - "because you earn interest."
Daughter - "how much?"
Son - "I don't know but I think it's like 1 percent."
Daughter - "so like if I put a million in I'd get another million?"
Son - "no... "
Daughter - "well what's 1 percent of one million?"
Son - "It's definitely not 1 million."
Daughter - "let's figure out how much it is!"
As a parent I'm told there are two things parents don't talk to their kids about enough. The first is sex. The second is finances. For our children, they don't earn allowances, but they have extra chores they do to earn what we call 'fortnight pay' (as is the custom in PNG). So they have house chores, and then pay chores. During our time in PNG we thought we should begin teaching them about how to be responsible with their finances.
There isn't a LOT of opportunity to SPEND money in PNG on anything... of quality. (but since when has that stopped a kid from buying things?)
Well, it stops my son.
He carefully evaluates quality of an item, verses how long it will last him. And often decides to save his money.
Likewise we've also instituted from each payday (every fortnight/ every second friday) that 10% of it goes into my savings box, and 10% of it goes to the offering at Sunday school.
I used to force it, but now it's at the point where it is voluntary and my son almost always does his savings, and they both always give to the Sunday School.
So, as a father, to realize they DO listen... when I overhear this conversation about savings and interest.... it does my heart good to know that even though they appear to not listen and learn, they are in fact learning much more than I had anticipated.
