How to Encourage Your Kindergartner to Be Frugal

Frugality does not have an age limit. It isn't a skill you learn just when you are about to leave home, at least, it shouldn't be! You can start teaching your child to be frugal from an early age when they have developed some basic awareness of money and what they can do with it. How can you encourage your kindergartner to be frugal?

Shopping for School Supplies

Shopping for school supplies, whether for next year's P.E. kit or for stationery, gives you an opportunity to teach hands-on lessons to your kindergartner when it comes to being frugal. For example, you can teach economy and thrift by showing your child different priced notebooks, pens and pencils and then asking them which ones are cheaper. To begin with, you may need to take a calculator along to help your child or use verbal prompts.

If you regularly turn shopping trips into a mathematics lesson, your child will soon start to grasp different concepts that can stand him or her in good stead as they get older.

Packed Lunches

Does your kindergartner often eat school dinners? If so, making the change to a packed lunch each day, or on occasion, can be hard for some children to adjust to if they are used to eating the same as their friends. But this is a good opportunity to teach your child how to experiment with different foods and also how to save money.

Start off by sitting your child down and letting them see how much it costs for them to eat a week's worth of school dinners, but without giving them a guilt trip about how much you spend. Then when you go shopping, let them help you pick out ingredients for packed lunch and compare the difference in price between the school dinners and the amount you spent on packet lunch supplies.

Saving Pocket Money

Does your kindergartner receive pocket money each week? If so, how does your son or daughter typically spend their money? Many young children do not have a clear grasp of money and the importance of making it last or of saving for a rainy day, so do not think twice about buying a game, snack or toy with their money until it is all gone. After all, once they have spent this week's pocket money, they know that they will receive more next week.

If your child does not already have a piggy bank or a jar, buy one for them and encourage them to save part of their pocket money each week, even if it is just a few coins. Once the money has grown, you can offer choices, such as depositing the money into a savings account, buying a toy or game they have been hankering after for a while or splurging on something else.

Even very young children, such as kindergartners, can learn to be frugal if they are taught some basic money management skills in their youth. The skills they learn will stay with them for years to come.