Piggy Banks Make Great Christmas Gifts

One of the best gifts that you can give a child is a Piggy Bank. You can find them all over. They come in many different designs, shapes, and colors. They are also fairly reasonable to purchase.

There are two types of Piggy Banks. The solid state and the ones with the little plastic circle hole covers. My father always told me there was a reason for the two types. The solid state was to be for long time savings. The ones with the plugs were for short time savings. However, they both taught the value of saving money. I always thought that the ones with the plugs was so that they could be used over and over.

I remember having a solid Piggy Bank. I use to use a butter knife to try and get the coins to come back out through the slot. I got pretty good at it. The only thing was that it took longer to get it full. It took me awhile but, I finally learned that the more you put in the bigger the toy you could buy. When I first started, I just did not have the patience to fill it up. Still, that alone was a valuable learning experience.

When I was teaching and coaching, I often found students leaving change on the bleachers, lunch trays, and even in the change slots on the soda machines. I often found change on the floor of the dressing room. To this day I can't figure out why students did this. I guess it was because they didn't have an appreciation for the value of money. Maybe they inherited this from their parents.

I once saw a student leave over $1 in change on her lunch tray. I asked her why she didn't pick it up. She said, "Oh I can get some more from my mom." This got me to thinking. Parents don't do a good enough job of teaching the value and basics of handling money. Lately, I have wondered if this is the same attitude that the CEO's on Wall Street have?