Concept of saving

[Jofo]

Seem to be arguing a lot with my soon to be 6 year old DS re saving his pocket money. Any money he has seems to burn a hole in his pocket and he is desperate to spend it on little bits of rubbish rather than save for the larger items he then says that he really wants i.e. Star Wars Lego.

I then get het up about it and try to over-explain the idea of saving and waiting. Does anyone have any advice? I don't want to turn him in to a miser but am at a loss how to show him the value of waiting and saving for something that he really would play with for a long time.

I suspect he's just too young to get it. Also, there's character: DD-8yo can easily save up (like me), and DS-10yo has to spend it the moment he gets it. DS even asks me to hold his money back because he knows he can't save on his own!

I remember saving when I was about 6ish. I?d seen something bigish I wanted and was told I would have to save. For every 20 or 30p I saved my parents said they would matched it with 5p (it was the 70?s so if I did the same with mine I?d allow for inflation, or not kid?s might work better with small amounts!) Plus I had one of those reward charts (that I hated) but I could turn points into 5p?s there as well.

This was before you could get money boxes and things from the banks when you saved?which they don?t do anymore so I guess it might be an idea to make you own incentives up.

Can you not suggest you split the savings with him? He gets to spend 50% and you keep 50% back for his savings? He can then watch it grow - if he has an ISA and keeps putting money in there via you, when he sees how it grows with interest, that might help him understand?

Great ideas, thank you. Will see how it goes and basically I know I need to decide something and stick to it as am giving him mixed messages about saving and money in general.

What about paying him interest on his savings?