Kathy Dow Discovers

This is a smart, new way to teach your child to save and at the same time discuss money management.

It’s a new take on the piggy bank and this time the pig knows exactly where the money should go.

The Money Savvy Pig, invented by Susan Beacham, was designed to help kids learn concepts like long term goal setting, delayed gratification and the value of money.  Now, instead of kids wanting to know where all Mom or Dad’s money goes, they can learn the process of divvying up their own cash ( they’ll understand how quickly money gets dispersed for different obligations).

I was so excited when I met Susan at the recent Holiday Gift Guide Show in NYC,  that I  could hardly wait to list it here on Kathy Dow Discovers.  I think it’s so cute and what a unique idea.   It’s the modern day piggy bank!

Here’s how it works:  The pig is compartmentalized: he has four slots on his back that drop your coins down into four different receptacles. Each of these sections are labeled with a goal-setting icon.  The first portion of the pig is labeled SAVE, for a short term goal ( maybe an icon of a bike, phone or ipod), the second chamber is labeled SPEND, which is where they save  their spending money (money to go to the movies, or get ice cream), then a DONATE chamber, where you can encourage your kids to save a portion of their money to donate to a charity (what a great lesson that is) and the last portion of the pig is labeled INVEST and this is for  long term goal money (such as for a car, or to invest in a financial instrument, or save for college).

When the back end of the pig (long term investment) gets full  the money  should be transfered to an interest bearing account at a bank. This enables the child to learn about interest from their monthly bank statements and back at home they can start to save all over. Cute, huh?  Smart, too.

And oh, check this out.  To avoid any mixed money issues, there are four separate pig hooves to retrieve the cash.  You can monitor the bank and make sure the Save, Donate and Invest chambers aren’t being tapped when your kid is supposed to be going into the Spend bin.

Do you have a baby shower or a birthday party coming up?  Bank on this piggy as the perfect gift.  It comes in several different colors and it’s priced right.

More information on Kathy’s List.