My son has his own bank accounts. Two savings accounts at Banco de Oro and BPI Family Bank respectively. I started giving him an allowance of 20 pesos per school day a few years back with the purpose of teaching him early on about savings and investment.
He’s doing good. For the past few years, most of his allowance goes straight to the bank. But growing up means having more needs and wants. I have seen him a few times buying ice cream, candies or cotton candy at dismissal time. He does manage to still save most of his allowance even with those purchases.
Today, I was able to point out to him, for the nth time, the value of having his own savings. He wanted to buy a new book from The Heroes of Olympus series. It was hardbound and of course more expensive than a softbound book. I said, “If you can’t wait for the softbound book, then you have to use your own money to buy it.”
So he withdrew 450 pesos from his bank account to pay for the book. I then told him afterwards, “Because of your savings, you were able to buy the next book in the book series. See how important savings (and investment) is? If you save your allowance and do not use it up for unimportant things, you’ll have money once there’s a need for you to buy something very important.”
He agreed wholeheartedly.
