Kids and Money - observations from the Book Fair

I just wrapped up a busy volunteering week at Liam's school - it was the Scholastic Book Fair and for the first time in several years, I was volunteering at one at the Elementary School level.  There were several things I noticed that separated the savvy shoppers and money mavens from the ones who weren't so prepared...

One of my favorite children to interact with was a 'deal guru' - she found a few books that had been slightly damaged by other children looking through them (a definite shopping hazard) and came up to see if she could get them at a discount... not being able to do that, she went back and exchanged the 'used' books for nicer ones in behind and paid full price - but to know that an 8 or 9 year old had the presence of mind to even ask about a deal warms my little couponing heart...

A lesson that I had to impart with fairly strong regularity is that $3.99 really means $4.00, not $3.00 - there were kids heading into the check out line with more great books than they could afford, because they were only adding the dollars column and not considering the cents...

Another thing that made the money conscious children stand out from the pack was that they bought what they wanted/ expected to buy and pocketed their change to save and spend another time.  If you've ever been to the book fair at schools, they offer a wide range of 'cheap' and overpriced school supplies and novelty items designed to ensure that a child who buys an $8 book with a $10 bill spend the other $2 on pencils, pens, erasers or book marks... it's good marketing for the book fair, but money savvy kids are wise to this scheme and head straight for the good stuff and save their change!

All of these anecdotes lead me to remember just how important it is to keep talking about and reinforcing good money habits at our home.  I found this article that breaks down the concepts of money and shares great activities and ideas by age level and I'm planning to use it with my boys to make sure we stay on track!

Disclaimer: This is a campaign with information sourced from Genworth Financial.