How to teach kids to build wealth from a young age, with compounding, the Sow Jar habit and a rand-for-rand match. Plus a free strawberry printable
Many people seem to have the mindset that wealth is only really something you can inherit, marry into, or end up with that one lucky bet.
And while in some instances that may be the case, the truth is that wealth is something to be built slowly over time, even by ordinary people who simply started early and kept on going.
The good news is that your mini millionaire already has the one thing money cannot buy back later: time.
This week we look at the mindset, the habit, and the small action that turns that head start into something real.
Small money plus lots of time beats big money in a hurry.
Teach your mini millionaire to think in decades, not weekends. The engine behind wealth is compounding: those returns that go on to earn their own returns, year in and year out.
It’s crazy to think that given enough time, compounding can actually multiply an investment so much that more of its value comes from growth than from the money you actually put in. Whoa…
That’s why even a small amount saved at the age of ten can outgrow a much larger amount that was scrambled together at thirty.
Takeaway: Starting sooner gives money more time to reinvest and grow.
Pay the Sow Jar before you pay the tuck shop.
Make the Sow Jar the first stop for every rand that lands, not the last thing it reaches.
When your mini millionaire receives some pocket money, birthday cash, or some money they earned doing chores around the house, a set portion should go into their Sow Jar before anything gets spent.
It’s called paying yourself first…
Treating the money you set aside to grow as a fixed commitment rather than whatever survives the month. For a mini millionaire, the amount barely matters. It’s more about building the habit, and what builds the habit is repeating the order over and over and over again.
Money grows first and spends second, and that sequence becomes automatic long before the numbers get serious.
Takeaway: A child who feeds the Sow Jar first will still do it without thinking at forty.
Turn the Sow Jar into a rand-for-rand offer they can't refuse.
This week, become your mini millionaire's employer match. Pick a week, or the whole month, and promise to add a rand of your own to the Sow Jar for every rand they put in. It copies how some South African employers top up staff retirement savings rand-for-rand as a perk.
For a mini millionaire, watching their R10 turn into R20 the moment it lands makes the payoff for saving impossible to miss. It also gives them a reason to feed the Sow Jar harder, since every coin drags a matching one along with it.
Takeaway: When saving comes with an instant match, a child learns to grab it every time.
Compounding is hard to picture (even for adults), so this week's free resource makes it something your mini millionaire can see and draw.
My Strawberry Patch imagines that a single strawberry doubles every week: one becomes two, two becomes four, and by week ten there are 512. Can you even believe it?
They fill in the table, then draw the patch swelling from one berry into a bunch that barely fits on the page.
It's the same kinda magic that happens when they leave money to grow in the Sow Jar.
Print it, work through it together, and watch the penny drop for them.
