Young kids may understand what money is but might not fully understand the value of the dollar or riyal. In a world that is becoming less reliant on physical money and turning to contactless forms of payment, explaining the concept of money may be even more difficult now. Teaching the concept of savings to young kids might be tougher as a result.
Despite that, we still think it is important to instill the value of the riyal as this is something that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. To get your kids to save their money, if there is something they are eyeing and interested in (for example a Lego set), that is a great starting point.
If they have a goal in mind of the exact amount of money they need, then you can use that to motivate them to begin thinking about how much money they need to save.
Parents can suggest that their child save a bit of money that they get and set it aside regularly and see the money they are saving for the set to accumulate.
A visual guide is useful in this scenario! Either in the form of a physical saving jar that they put money in or an app like FataFeat where they can allocate certain amounts of money for the Lego set.
Get the whole family involved!
We’d also suggest making this a family activity. After all, we learn by example and children are no exception. The whole family can have a unified goal that they are trying to achieve and each person (depending on the age) can have an allocated total amount of money they are trying to add to the ‘jar’ for the combined goal (for example going to a waterpark).
Alternatively, each person can have their own saving goal and each family member can hold one another accountable to make sure that they are setting a little change or money aside to reach the goal.
However, you choose to introduce the concept of saving to your child, we think it is a great step to help them better understand the value of each riyal.
We firmly believe that teaching good habits starts at home and that the present is always the right time to start!