…pocket money cashbooks…

One of the things I’ve found hardest to manage in this almost-cashless society of ours, isn’t coming across that one little shop that doesn’t have eftpos, but something a lot closer to home…pocket money. Because I don’t really carry cash these days, to pay out the kids pocket money involves a trip to the bank, looking like a dork asking for $20 in $1 coins so the kids can allocate each week’s pay…and then raiding the money boxes for a random Saturday tip run that we don’t have cash on hand for.

Thanks to a friend’s recommendation when I was lamenting this, we signed the big kids up for a Spriggy card**, but as much as the cash thing was annoying and inconvenient, I also wasn’t a fan of purely electronic methods that wouldn’t show them where their money was and where it was going. That’s when I got busy, and designed them up a little cashbook each.

They are really simple little books, just printed at home, double sided, then folded in half and bound by hand by each child with a cardstock cover, and then the corners rounded to fancy it up a bit!

I have just popped the PDF I created up in my shop, but simple lined or grid paper would also work equally well. We had 5 sheets of paper, which became 20 pages on the book (two pages per side, printed double sided), which gave us 2 savings balance ledgers, 2 short term balance ledgers, 2 spending balance ledgers, and the remaining 14 pages are general incoming/outgoing pages. Once we had it printed and the pages in the right order, we folded in half, and used an awl to punch four holes in the spine, and then just stitched together with a running stitch in perle cotton using a tapestry needle.

The way it works, is when they are paid each Friday, they list the incoming in the general pages, and then divvy it up between Sunday school givings (which just shows straight up as an outgoing), what they was to save, what they want to put towards short term goals, and what they want to put into general spendings for immediate wants. All four sections have a running balance column, so we are able to balance back the three little pots of money to the main total. Once we’ve done all that I can allocate funds directly from my bank account to their Dollarmite bank account or their card, so I’ve eliminated the cash issue but still have had the chance to work with them on a weekly basis to teach them financial management and tracking where their money goes. I feel like the books also show them that electronic money is still real money and they need to be responsible for it as they would for cash, which in this day and age can be just as important as cash handling!

** this is not a sponsored post. The link I have included is a referral link all accounts have that gives a $5 bonus to new families that sign up using the link, and also gives me a bonus for referring you. My intention wasn’t to become a Spriggy spruiking post, but to share the cute books I made with my kids, and the card is an incidental part of the system we use the books for **