Thursday, January 21, 2010

Day One - Our Found Money "Game"

Tell the kids it's a game...yah, that's it!

Back in February 2009 I blogged about this website where this family started tracking & blogging about money they found. I thought it would be a fun "game" for our family to try. So I asked the kids tonight if they'd be interested in playing a game called "found money". Well shoot, mention the word "money" in the vicinity of my boy & he's ALL over it!

So I backed up & asked him if he knew what a blog was (an online journal) and if they remembered when we went to the Dells (he remembered, she didn't). I told them that I'd like to try a game where we might be able to save up some money so we could go again. They loved the idea. How do we play?

I explained that we start tracking all the money we find...only money found outside of our home, on the ground. Instead of "find a penny & put it in your shoe," it will be find money and put it in the Found Money jar. Anything out of the home is fair game...as long as it's not someone else's money (we're not stealing here!! this is "found" money).

My boy asks about money we find in our home...I told him all our in-home spare change needs to go into our family jar (another saving thing we do). He asks "what if I find $10?", it goes in the Found Money jar. We're not going to do this if we're going to be choosey about keeping vs putting it in the jar. Both kids decided to be on board for the rules. Please note: some found money (like $10) would need to see if the owner is around...Found Money is based on change found on the ground that we see in parking lots & such!

So we were off for our first "found money" trip. We stopped at CVS Pharmacy to drop off/pick up a script. My girl was the first - she found a dime as we walked in the door! Then my boy starts checking out the floor around the registers. By the time we left we had searched the floor from one end of the store to the other (it was quite a wait for that script). So how much did we find for our first Found Money hunt? We collected 93¢ tonight! We're off to a great start!