Sign in
Continuing the Tradition at Happy State Bank
Back in January, I wrote this blog about how we had opened savings accounts for our kids. At the end of the article I allude to the fact we would be working with the kids to start building those accounts. Here is the follow up…
photo credit: Jeffrey Wooten Creative
The idea was to keep a list of daily and weekly chores for each kid and keep track of their completion rate on what we call “The Check Chart.” It’s pretty simple; many of you may have a similar system in place at home. Each day the kids have certain tasks to complete. They put a check by each task, and, if by the end of the day they have checked off all their tasks, they get a star for that day. For each day they get a star, they get paid at the end of the week. We hold their funds, and, at the end of the month, we take the money they have earned and deposit it into their Happy State Bank savings accounts. They have a choice to keep $5 out and spend it on themselves, or they can deposit that money too.
photo credit: Jeffrey Wooten Creative
As with many of our best laid plans, this one has proved to be great in theory and occasionally difficult in practice. If you’re a parent, you know most plans can be difficult to execute consistently. Sometimes, the alarm doesn’t go off so there’s no time to make beds in the morning and then the baseball game ran late so the trash didn’t get taken out. Life is busy. What are you gonna do?
As parents we are far from rigid, but it easy to get too relaxed, too. So we’ve done the best we can, and we’ve been pretty consistent with our Check Chart and our monthly deposits, and, as is typical, the misses are because the parents lack of consistency rather than any problem with the kids’ efforts. Although to be fair, sometimes the kids have totally bombed! It happens.
photo credit: Jeffrey Wooten Creative
The one constant in all of this experiment has been our good friends at Happy State Bank. In the last blog post, I mentioned we had recently switched to Happy, and I can confidently say we are as happy about that now as we were then. Every time our kids come in, all the tellers and bankers are exceedingly friendly. They answer the kids’ questions and show them how their balances are growing. The kids are excited that they have some money put away, and they see how their hard work pays off for the future. The truth is they love going to the bank for the friendly smiles and a piece of saltwater taffy, while I love taking them there for the lessons they’re learning and the great bank staff who help us teach them.
