Help, My Child Broke into Her Piggy Bank

How I failed at my first attempt to teach my daughter about saving

I probably should’ve known something was going to go down when my five-year-old asked that we retrieve the key to her piggy bank so she could see how much money she had in there.

" I want to see how many monies (sic) I have," she said.

“No,” I said. “We’re not supposed to open the piggy bank. We’re saving.”

She let it go and we moved on, me thinking I was winning at the parenting game. See, in my head, I was doing a great job.  A few months back I’d bought her a real piggy bank complete with a little padlock. We had transferred her “monies,” as she calls them, from the tin her grandfather gave her into this new piggy bank, covered in pink unicorns no less.

 I was on the way to teaching her the importance of saving early. That’s what the experts say to do, right?

Fast forward to about a month later: I was working from home one afternoon, while my daughter played in the sitting room with her grandmother. When I walked out to check on them, my mum had, in one hand, the famous piggy bank and, in the other, a palm full of coins. The ones we’d been collecting the last few months!

My daughter wouldn’t tell us exactly how she did it but somehow she had found a way to prise the piggy bank open from the back.  

Was I upset? Yes. But more with myself than with her. All I could manage was to offer a shaky lesson on why we should not break things.  

But the bigger lesson? That one was mine to learn.

 

Lessons Learned from a Broken Piggy Bank

Here's where I missed the mark:

I did not help her understand why she was saving the money. To me as an adult, a piggy bank of course means saving for the future. Without me explaining the purpose of the piggy bank to my five-year-old she simply saw it as just a fun place to store her coins, not as a tool for saving. If she didn’t understand why the money was being saved, she likely saw the coins as just "her money" that she could access when she wanted.

Lack of stakeholder engagement! In my work in the non-profit sector we often talk about “involving stakeholders in decision making”.  I’m using this jargon tongue-in-cheek to show that I didn’t really involve my child in the saving process. Simply depositing coins without involving her in the process didn't foster a sense of ownership or understanding.

Curiosity + Accessibility = Disaster. Ignoring her request for the key and yet keeping the piggy bank within easy reach must have triggered her curiosity to unlock the secret behind the locked piggy bank. Combine that with a child’s innate curiosity and this outcome was inevitable. I missed a teachable moment to explain to her not only why we couldn’t open the piggy bank but also explain more about the entire process.  

 

What I’m Doing Differently Now:

Just because I failed this one time doesn’t mean I’m giving up. I’m taking notes from experts and choosing to learn from this break-in.

Here are some suggestions I have read up on and that I plan to implement:

• What you see is what you get. Clear containers, not locked ones. We’re swapping the piggy bank for a transparent jar. She can see her money grow, which, the experts say makes it real and exciting.
• Set savings goals together. We’ll talk about something she really wants—a toy, an outing. Then we’ll label the jar and watch the coins pile up for that specific thing.
• Talk about money often—and out loud. I’ll explain my own choices in simple terms. “Mum is saving for our trip to XYZ, that’s why I didn’t buy that dress today.” She may not understand it all, but hopefully she’ll start to absorb the message.
• Involve her like a stakeholder Lesson leant; you cannot ignore stakeholder input! So now, she gets a say. It’s her money, after all.
• Make saving fun. We’re turning this into a family activity. it’s going to be a game, not a lecture.
• Be consistent. Not just with depositing coins, but with conversations. Money talk won’t be a one-off, it’ll be part of our normal, everyday life.

I share this not just to laugh at myself but to remind us that teaching kids about money isn’t about perfection—it’s about progress. Sometimes the lessons hit harder when they’re learned the messy way.

And who knows, maybe the best money lesson starts with a broken piggy bank!

 

By Martha Songa