I was talking to a good friend recently, and she mentioned a great, easy way to help teach your kids to share their money. If you happen to go to a place of worship that takes donations, have them regularly donate some amount from their “Share” piggy banks (or wherever they’re saving it) to church on a weekly basis (or however often you make it).
I thought this simple piece of advice was very useful. Kids typically have such little money to donate, and doing so to larger charities requires a little more work and might even be considered a bit too abstract for them to understand. In the church example, they can see that their money is going to something more tangible, and they will feel more like a part of the congregation.
As anyone with kids knows, anything they can do to make them feel more “adult” really makes their day. Of course, we parents are in no rush for them to grow up, but that’s a story for another blog.
John