When us kids were very young, as in lower grades of elementary school, my father would do the usual “1 of ten coins is for tithing” lesson, but with a bit of a twist. He would show us a dollar. Then he would show us a bunch of dimes (10 cents) and have us kids create the equivalent of the dollar. Then he would say “What should you do when you earn a dollar?” All of us kids would dutifully answer with what we learned at church that we should first take one dime and pay our tithing.
But Dad didn’t stop there. He proceeded to tell us that we needed to “save for a rainy day” and we also needed to “save for our next big life event” (which for us kids would be a mission).
So, he had us all make three “banks” -one for Tithing, one for Savings, and one for Missionary Fund. These were jars that we labeled, and cut a slot in the lid to put the coins in. However for the Savings and Missionary Fund jars, we also taped the lids shut. Of course the point was that we would not be tempted to take out the money early-these were long-term savings.
And if my father ever gave us money (for an allowance or even as a birthday present), he always made sure that it was already in a form that it could be distributed between those three jars.
Later, when the jars got so full that no more would fit, we would have kind of a big ceremony where we would open the jars and count how much money was in there, and Dad would give us paper money to replace the coins so that we would have more room. And when we got a bit older, instead of doing that he would take us down to the local bank and open a savings account there-starting with the bottle of money that our Savings had.