Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Learning about Money

Had a great day with my younger two today. Among other things, we were working on a couple of AHG badges. No, Richard has not joined American Heritage Girls. But the Money Management badge is GOOD stuff, and I told him he had to work on it too.

We started the day over at Farmer's State Bank in Ellicott.  Trina talked to a couple of the tellers, as there was nobody else in there when we arrived.  Jessi mostly.



Jessi told Trina about some of the things she does as a bank teller.  She has to know which type of form people need to use for all kinds of different transactions, so she showed the kids deposit slips, counter checks, withdrawal slips, etc.  She talked about the difference between savings and checking accounts, and showed her where the safety deposit boxes are.  She explained the education needed to be a bank teller.  She also told her that the really important thing she had to do as a bank teller was NOT to tell anyone about anything they weren't authorized to know.  So if Trina went in and asked what the balance is in Richard's account, Jessi can't tell her.  But Jessi can tell Mom, since I am on his account.  

There were a lot of people in setting up bank accounts, so we headed to town to do some grocery shopping, with the plan to come back.

At the store, we did some comparison shopping, looking at name brand vs. store brand for a bunch of things.  The store brand was always less expensive.  We compared chicken nuggets, peanut butter, parmesan cheese, ketchup, string cheese, and lasagna noodles.  We talked about my basic strategy with store brands, which is to try them first.  There are a couple of items where I don't like the store brand, and I am willing to pay more for the name brand.  We discussed the fact that Grandma would pay the extra money to get Skippy Crunchy peanut butter.  She just liked Skippy.

We also compared different size packages to see the price difference per ounce.  There we looked at chicken thighs, ketchup, peanut butter, mozzarella cheese, and parmesan cheese.  The 32 oz store brand ketchup cost more per ounce than the 22 oz store brand did.  Otherwise, bigger containers did cost less per ounce.  We had a great conversation about when it is a good idea to buy the biggest containers, and when it makes more sense to purchase a smaller size even though it costs more per ounce.  

Of course, the idea of not being able to go through a bigger container is foreign to kids who have grown up with three big brothers.  

We also needed to replace a cheap pair of headphones, so while we were at it, we did price comparisons there too, and discussed why we were choosing the $13 headphones instead of the $5 ones.  "You get what you pay for," was mentioned in the AHG book, so we talked about it there.

Back at the bank, we talked to Josh's dad (aka Mr. Yoder) about why it is a good idea to use a bank to save up money, what the bank does with the money, and he talked a whole lot about compound interest.  Good stuff, all of that, though I think Trina's eyes glossed over at some point in there.  Mostly, she tracked with him.  

Then we went to see Cheryl and both of them opened up savings accounts.  Cheryl gave them passbooks with deposit and withdrawal slips, and gave them each a pen.

It was a productive day, but we still have more to do to earn the Money Management badge.  Mostly, that is going to involve some Bible reading to see what God has to say about money

1 comment:

Michele said...

How fun! What a great learning experience.