Twenty dollars for the holidays
A relative gives you $20 at the start of the school holidays. Six weeks to go. There is a book you want for $8, and your friends will be going to the pool most weeks at $2 each time.
What is your plan?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
A spending plan is a decision you make before the money is in your hand. That is the only difference between a plan and a guess.
The parts add up to what you have
If you have $20 and plan $10 to save, $8 to spend and $2 to give, that is $20. If your parts add to more than you have, it is a wish, not a plan.
Plans are allowed to change
Changing a plan on purpose is fine. What causes trouble is having no plan and finding out afterwards where the money went.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
Does the Plan Work?
1 of 2
You have $15. Your plan is $10 to save and $8 to spend. Does the plan work?
2 of 2
You have $30 and plan to save half. How much is that?
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
What makes something a plan rather than a guess?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Plan next week
- Write down any money you expect this week.
- Split it into three: keep, spend, give.
- At the end of the week, check what actually happened.
Why: Comparing the plan with what happened is where the learning is, not in the plan itself.
For a grown-up: Resist correcting the split. An unhelpful plan teaches faster than a good one imposed.
Step 6: What You Learned
- A plan is decided before the money is spent.
- The parts have to add up to what you have.
- Changing a plan on purpose is fine.
For the grown-up
Save-spend-give is the standard three-jar model and its value is not the giving; it is that the child sees the whole amount divided before any of it moves. The division is the lesson.
Watch for a plan whose parts exceed the total. Children rarely check the sum because the plan feels like a wish list, and the fix is to add it up out loud rather than to say the plan is wrong.
Let a bad plan run once. A child who spends everything in week one and has nothing in week two has learned something no explanation delivers.