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| This little piggy gets emptied |
We have been waiting for this day for some time, over five years actually. It was time to empty Tyler's Piggy Bank. It had been sitting in his room on his dresser, gone almost unnoticed over that span of time. Stacks of clothes and stuffed animals buried the poor little guy, but his day finally came. Five years worth of coins were going to get a new home, it was time for this little piggy to go to the bank.
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| We're gonna be rich |
Fortunately for us there is a bank near our house that counted up all the money for us. I mean really who has the time to roll up all of these coins. My dad said I was nuts to pay a six percent processing fee, but figuring this would easily take a couple of hours to do I was more than happy to pay someone else. I guess it could have been a good moment for me and the boys to count up the money together, but since one of them can't count past five, and the other loses interest depending on what is on TV, I figured LET THE BANK DO IT.
The boys were just as excited as I was when we got to the bank. They have this little "Penny Arcade" that you dump the money into, and when its all done it spits out a receipt with the amount of money that you get, pretty simple. I don't know how much of the money the machine eats for itself, they could easily take out an extra twenty dollars and I would have no idea, but banks would never take more money from us than they say they will right? No way. Banks are honest and our friends. At least this one seemed to be anyway. They had lollipops for the boys, that just screams honesty (or a subtle way to say that we are all suckers.)
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| This is after, it was too heavy to lift |
This bank was not the easiest thing to empty. I felt kind of weird sticking my finger in the pigs hole, see that does sound weird doesn't it? Anyway, coins were stuffed in there a little to tightly as they took forever to come out. I did find a bunch of paper money and also found my car keys that I had lost four years ago so that was a bonus. The sound of the arcade was comparable to that of a slot machine paying out a huge jackpot. I actually don't know what that would sound like as I never win on the slots, but I imagine this is what it would sound like if I do ever win. As the money poured out of the pig and into the machine my boys could hardly contain their excitement. Every cha ching meant they could buy something bigger and bigger.
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| That's a lot of coins |
When it was all over we had over $247.00. I have to say that is not a bad haul, considering this was five years in the making. I know that this should be a moment where I sit the boys down and teach them a lessen about finances, but in all honesty I would have no idea what I'm talking about. Sure we could put the money in the bank but really what good is it going to do there. Interest rates are horrible and the money just isn't going to grow like it did when I was a kid. I mean I was getting somewhere like 14% interest on my money back when I was there age, so it kind of made sense to put the money in the back, even though I probably would have liked to buy a stomper or a Colecovision game. The only thing that makes sense now is to SPEND IT. And what did we spend it on? We bought legos of course.
What would you have done with the money? Spend it? Save it? Give it to charity? Leave me a comment below.
Legos are a great thing to purchase with all that "found" money. I sure do miss playing with stompers.... FYI many banks will wave the processing fee if the coins are going into a child's acciunt
ReplyDeleteI know the fee would have been waved if we were members of the bank... I'll have to look into how much we would actually need to keep in the account in order to avoid any fees. STUPID FEES!
ReplyDeleteThink you done the ring thing spending the money, the kids have loads of time to learn about the value of money and saving etc, let them enjoy it while they can :D
ReplyDeleteHell yeah. Nice stash. The C's dont have nearly that much but we are letting them use their money for stuff they want when we go on vacation to the beach next month
ReplyDeleteEnjoy the weekend
If we went to the bank more often it wouldn't seem like that much... Enjoy the beach!
ReplyDeleteThe problem with rolling the money is that, best I understand, the bank employee still has to open the roll and count them out. I know at least one bank I went into only let you deposit change through that machine.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd totally let the kids buy whatever toys they wanted at their age. Have them start saving their money when they get their first job.
Then they should charge you 6 percent if do roll them up. To have someone count them would just be ridiculous. We have a lot if money left over too so we got some rainy day money as well.
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