Hello Everybody! This weeks carnival will be brief becuase their wasn’t very many articles submitied. That’s okay, though, becuase those that were submited are quality. Enjoy!
Debt Reduction

Tim Ramsey presents 5 Ways to Try and Reduce …

$5 for the first one and $2 for all others has been the norm in our house.

anothertoothfairy – thanks for sharing the story about your boys. My son would do the same thing and try to get more money! I better hide those teeth under lock and key LOL.

And to add a little more clarification, my son will receive $1.00 for every tooth that he loses. For the very first tooth, he will receive the $1.00 plus the extra bonus of the savings bond.

What a great idea to leave a savings bond. You’re smart to include a lesson with the first lost tooth to help your son become educated in financial matters. I sure wish I would have been that insightful.

My son lost his first four teeth by age seven and did not lose another until he was 12. By that time he knew the identity of the tooth fairy. Maybe you’ll be that lucky.

A couple I know bought a special piggy bank for their daughter. There are 4 buckets – one for saving, one for fun, one for charity, and I forgot what the other one was for… Maybe short-term savings?

You could do something similar for your son. Have him divded the money into 2 or 3 buckets. Some he saves for a rainy day, some he saves for a special item, like a toy or comic book, and some he can spend now if he wants, and some he gives to charity. It teaches him about money, about doing good for others, and helps get him in the habit of saving.

I disagree with the others about him being disappointed next year. You can mention the $25 savings, but he’ll probably focus more on the tangible reward at that age – the dollar coin. Odds are he won’t remember the $25, but even if he does you can just tell him how much his first $25 earned and make that sound like a reward. It wasn’t something tangible in the first place, so it probably won’t matter. He’ll still get his gold coin.

I think I would squeeze in one for birthday’s and holidays as well – if I could do it over again. I would also decrease the gifts by this amount.

Then I would download the Savings Wizzard off the bond site (which I already have) and monthly I would begin, when he is ready, reviewing and showing his growth for … a car, college, etc.

Awesome money teaching idea! Love it!

What I’m hoping is that at that time, he’ll redeem that savings bond and see how much more money he got from it and get a taste of what happens when your money is allowed to grow.

I like the “golden” dollar coin idea!

I was never visited by the tooth fairy. :-/

Interestingly, my oldest son has never given the tooth fairy even one of his teeth. He’s 12. I’m guessing that, one day, we’ll find a really big stash under his pillow! Yikes.

Maybe you could say that you will match in a savings bond the same amount that the tooth fairy pays, so if the tooth fairy gives him 50 cents, you will also put 50 cents into an “account” jar that gains interest over the years (you can deposit the “earned interest” change into the jar along with the new “deposit” each time a tooth is lost and tape a little tracking chart onto the jar for calculation purposes).

Then, at age 10, he can see how the “savings account” amount differs from the amount he received from the tooth fairy and at that point after losing the last tooth he can choose whether to “cash out” the account, or use the funds to buy a long-term savings bond that will be worth even more in the future.

I dunno. I’m really just making this all up as I go along (and I don’t have kids, so I can’t really talk). I was just trying to figure out a way that you can give him the lesson you’re trying to teach while still allowing him to get the change under the pillow from the tooth fairy each time and not give the impression that the tooth fairy is holding his money in the bank!

P.S. I remember making a detailed little drawing when I was young of the tooth fairy world and how the teeth were like money to them so they’d happily trade the tooth for our world’s currency and they’d take the teeth and deposit them into their tooth bank (which was in a tree)! I guess my mom had been teaching me about saving, too!

In any case, I got a lot more enjoyment trying to figure out how the envelope I so carefully put my tooth in reappeared magically the next morning with no tooth and a quarter, but still sealed. The money was an afterthought!