I was listening to the latest Mom’s Money podcast, this week’s show is about teaching kids about money. This is a great topic for me because I want to start giving my kids an allowance and just don’t know how. I’ve mentioned they are price conscious and now seems to be a great time to start working with money.

While listening to Mom’s Money I decided my kids need piggy banks. I know I had seen one with multiple compartments for saving, spending, donation, etc., so off I went on a Google-quest to find said piggy bank. I tried Amazon – who had the one I wanted (the Money Savvy Piggy Bank) listed, but it isn’t available right now. Okay so tried and true Amazon failed me – but google won’t!

Back to searching.

I found the site that created the money savvy bank – and wow it is available in multiple colors! Alice immediately picked pink and Jake wanted green. I’m thinking this is a great idea but can I find it locally so I can save on shipping costs. Ahah, Toys R Us! But their phone number is busy no matter how many times I call them in five minutes. Since my brain is skipping from thread to thread, I quickly move on.

A quick glance around the bank creators site shows me a cow bank and a football bank – Jake sticks to wanting a green pig, Alice thought the cow was cute but she’s becoming attached to the color pink in general so there was no changing her mind.

Still thinking I want to save on shipping, I go back to Google – maybe there is a site that has it offering free shipping or low shipping. Darn Amazon anyway.

Then I stumble upon a post on the financial blog Get Rich Slowly about this exact piggy bank. Reading the post is merely verifying my want of the piggy banks and I’m ready to click back and buy the banks, sucking up the shipping charge (and the crazy fact that I would be spending a chunk of change to teach my kids to save money). Then I read the words

(Of course, the truly frugal can accomplish the same thing with four canning jars.)

His parentheses; and the link goes to a flickr picture of three canning jars with a child’s handwriting indicating saving, spending and donate. It took searching and bouncing from site to site and my finger on the buy now button before I thought *duh I have old Ball Mason jars* – I can just use a few of them! A little while later and we went from this

to this on the dresser.

Save, Spend, Donate.

I stayed with green paper for Jake and pink for Alice, used stamps from Stampin’ Up to decorate the punched out circle and look at that – a three component piggy bank system. It’s about time I use the jars for something, as they haven’t moved since I put them up on the shelves. Their allowances start next week.

How does your brain work when searching for something?

Brain Thread is a post from: me being crafty