For kids, it’s banking in a nutshell
DAN VOELPEL; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Imagine you have two acorns and need carrots. You can trade both acorns for a bag of peeled, ready-to-eat baby carrots. Or you can trade one acorn for a bunch of big carrots that you must wash, peel and slice before you can eat them. And if you opt for the big carrots you’ll still have one acorn left to trade for something else.
What would you do?
We probably would have dismissed choices and questions like this as blasé, academic and irrelevant a year ago.
But not today.
Do you feel adrift without a paddle in a roiling sea of stock market swells and nest egg depressions? Do you watch the wild swings in the stock market like the gold medal match of Olympic Games pingpong? Do you feel overwhelmed by the bombardment of often-contradictory expert advice telling you when to buy, sell or stand pat?
Well, I’m no financial expert. But I have some advice. Whether you live on an annual household income of $1 million or $10,000, take your children – or your grandchildren – to the Children’s Museum of Tacoma. Spend a few minutes with Scout the Squirrel.
Long before the current recession, the masterminds of the museum’s Learning Lounge decided to create a series of interactive stations where parents and young children make rudimentary but real-life-like choices about how to spend, save and share money.
In the “Bank on It!” Learning Lounge, money takes the form of magnetized acorns.
Amy Marlow took her 2-year-old Henry, 5-year-old Anna and 7-year-old Maggie to meet Scout the Squirrel.
“I try to explain this stuff to them all the time, but I can’t come up with a way to get it across to them in a way they understand,” Marlow said.
Marlow, a trained accountant, most recently kept the books for a Seattle biotech company. She knows debits, credits, assets and liabilities.
If she can’t get through to her kids, how can you or I?
“We give some general messages that you should plan what to do with your money, that without having a plan in mind, it just goes out the door,” said Debbie Kray, the museum’s director of education. “So we try to start conversations about spending, saving and sharing your money.”
Scout and his acorns can help.
At the “Trunks & Branches” station, visitors explore the relationship between spending acorns on everyday needs and wants versus saving for something special.
At “Smart Shopping,” you have a set number of acorns and a grocery list. You can comparison shop on a budget and make choices – like baby carrots for two acorns versus bulk carrots for one.
At “Balancing Act,” you get some disposable acorn income and divide it into piles to share, save or spend.
At “Give When you Can,” you can share limited acorns directly to help others in small ways or combine with other acorn-givers to achieve bigger giving results.
“To give money to people who are less fortunate is a big part of our family,” Marlow said. With Scout’s help “I found it to be a fun, easy, very simplistic thing for them to understand.”
Maggie, the 7-year-old, seemed to grasp the concepts better than her younger sister and brother, Marlow said.
“She really connected with it, especially with that grocery list game. She realized that she can put stuff back when she noticed she needed more money for other things. She made good choices.”
Isn’t that what we wish for our kids – that they make good choices?
During this tumultuous economic time, your kids may see you making changes in your household spending habits and wonder why. Maybe you buy generic now. Maybe you don’t dine out as much. Maybe they won’t get as many goodies this Christmas as they have in past years.
A few minutes with Scout the Squirrel will help you talk to them about it.
Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785
dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com">
dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com
Children’s Museum learning lounge
What: “Bank on It!” Learning Lounge exhibit, which teaches kids about how to manage money
Sponsor: Key Bank
Supporters: State Farm Insurance, The Baker Foundation, Dan & Pat Nelson Family Foundation, Russell Investments
Where: 936 Broadway, Tacoma
When: Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.; first Friday of each month free from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Admission: $6
Information: 253-627-6031 or
childrensmuseumoftacoma.org
