School Is Back in Session, So It’s Time to Get Involved With Cent$ible Kid$

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by Jorge Santiago

It’s never too early to teach your kids the importance of saving their money. But, in fact, many children get to high school lacking the financial acumen necessary to navigate the next chapters in their lives.

Understanding this, The Milford Bank launched the Cent$ible Kid$ program in 2008. We envisioned that the program would help young kids realize the importance of saving their money. To help engrain that message, we visit students in Milford and Stratford elementary schools and show them  how to open a savings account—it’s like a piggy bank, but secure and more measurable.

“We think it’s important to teach kids to regularly save their money for a worthwhile purpose, like something special they want, rather than just asking [their parents] for it,” explains Bob Russo, Vice President and Manager of our Broad Street office. “It’s about choices: They have to decide how to spend their money. We believe it promotes good behavior.”

Whether the students deposit 10 cents or $20 a week doesn’t matter to us. Rather, we’re more interested in encouraging the thrifty behavior. And that’s why we give each child a $1 bonus after making five deposits. After making eight deposits, we give them a $1 gold coin, too.

Right now, there are over 500 kids in the program, according to Russo.

In addition to encouraging the youth to open savings accounts, we also educate them on a variety of bank-related topics including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the U.S. Mint, interest rates and more.

Since school is back in session, now is the perfect time to teach your kids about the importance of saving their money. We believe that Cent$ible Kid$ is a program that will help do that.

 

School Is Almost Back in Session, So It’s Time to Get Involved With Cent$ible Kid$

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By Jorge Santiago

It’s never too early to teach your kids the importance of saving their money. But, in fact, many children get to high school lacking the financial knowledge necessary to navigate the next chapters in their lives.

Understanding this, The Milford Bank launched its Cent$ible Kid$ program in 2008. We envisioned that the program would help young kids realize the importance of saving their money. To help engrain that message, we visit students in Milford and Stratford elementary schools and show themhow to open a savings account—it’s like a piggy bank, but secure and more measurable.

“We think it’s important to teach kids to regularly save their money for a worthwhile purpose, like something special they want, rather than just asking [their parents] for it,” explains Bob Russo, a vice president and manager who works out of our Broad Street office. “It’s about choices: They have to decide how to spend their money. We believe it promotes good behavior.”

Whether the students deposit 10 cents or $20 a week doesn’t matter to us. Rather, we’re more interested in encouraging the thrifty behavior. And that’s why we give each child a $1 bonus after making five deposits. After making eight deposits, we give them a $1 gold coin, too.

Right now, there are over 500 kids in the program, according to Russo.

In addition to encouraging the youth to open savings accounts, we also educate them on a variety of bank-related topics including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the U.S. Mint, interest rates and more.
Since school is almost back in session, now is the perfect time to teach your kids about the importance of saving their money. We believe that Cent$ible Kid$ is a program that will help do that.

The Milford Bank: Focused on Turning Your Children into Cent$ible Kid$

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By Bob Russo

Recent research indicates that 27 percent of parents with children who are minors don’t have any money saved for them. What’s more, in 2012, the average financial literacy score for high school students was a “D.”

It’s never too early to start learning about finance. That’s precisely why we at The Milford Bank launched our Cent$ible Kid$ program in 2008, designed to educate our community’s children about the importance of saving money. As participants in the program, kids in Milford and Stratford schools are able to open savings accounts that they can put money into each week.

We believe that it doesn’t matter whether those deposits are 50 cents or $10. What’s important is having children begin the process of understanding their finances. Smart savings habits will help sculpt future shrewd behaviors related to spending, saving and investing.

Three-quarters of adults indicate they believe that it’s important to offer financial advice to our children, but only 36 percent of them do. We’re trying to bridge that gap with Cent$ible Kid$.

In addition to giving them the opportunity to save, we also use Cent$ible Kid$ as a platform through which to offer comprehensive bank-related education to today’s youth, like how money is protected in a bank thanks to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, how it grows with interest and more.

From piggy banks to pads and pens and everything in between, members of our program will also get freebies with coupons in our seasonal newsletters. Click here to learn more about the program.