When I was a kid, I loved going to the bank. I thought it was pretty cool that I had my own account – a passbook account at Old Stone. I remember filling out the deposit slip at the counter, using the pen attached to that little chain.
My revenue stream at the time was small, but steady. My aunt and uncle, who had moved to Clearwater, Fla., always sent me a gift for my birthday. There were other gifts like that. My uncle Jim would visit us often – usually on Sunday evenings – and would never leave without putting a fistful of quarters in my hand.
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Before long, I had a paper route. It was a small route – Rosemere Drive and Tab Avenue in East Providence, with 33 papers in total.
But it meant real money. Most weeks I would clear about $12 – maybe even $17 on an especially good week. The couple of weeks prior to Christmas meant better-than-usual tips, or sometimes those money envelope cards. I still remember making close to $100 in tip money during the holidays.
What I didn’t spend on gifts for my parents and my three brothers (and maybe a little something for myself) went into that bank account. It was exciting to make a “big” deposit at the end of the year – like $60 or $80.
I still remember that it was exciting to walk away from the teller and check to see how much interest my money had earned. The very idea of getting that extra money seemed amazing to me.
I got to thinking about all of this because the other day I took my daughter Carlene into a local bank to open her first passbook savings account.
Carlene is 8 years old. And thanks largely to the generosity of her aunts and uncles, she was ready to open her first bank account. We sat down with a banker and I told him that my daughter was interested in opening a passbook savings account.
He looked at me like I had three heads. It was the exact same response I remember getting from another banker two years ago when my wife and I had accompanied our daughter Amanda to the bank for the same reason.
“Are you sure you want a passbook account? The interest rate is pretty low.”
Yes, I assured him. We’d like to open a passbook savings account.
I know the banker was just doing his job in suggesting that maybe another type of account might make more sense.
But my daughters aren’t checking interest rates. They aren’t writing a lot of checks these days. But they are doing chores, earning a couple of dollars here and there. And they get birthday gifts and gifts on other special occasions.
A passbook savings account serves an important purpose. It shows a tangible accounting of their money and demonstrates in black and white the very concept of earning interest – of making an investment of sorts.
And it does something else. It gives them a reason to walk past the ATM and into the bank. For a kid, that leaves an impression. It’s a serious place. But they belong. With their passbook in hand, they belong there like everyone else.
Carlene was just thrilled to sign her name to her account. And after making that first deposit, I watched as she checked that first entry in her brand new passbook. She smiled and walked out of that bank with a bounce in her step – a tangible sense of confidence. Like maybe this was the start of something – something special.
You see, she can look at that passbook any time she wants. She can touch it and feel it.
Someday the kids can transfer those passbook accounts to something fancier. But they wouldn’t remember having such an account if they never had one.
There may well be more interest bearing accounts available. But by setting the kids up with passbook accounts, I’m actually banking on a much bigger return on investment.
And come to think of it – under the desk I am working at right now, there is a big plastic container. The kids fill it with change. We’re going to put it toward our first family trip to Disney World – hopefully within the next year or two.
Now, that might not be the smartest investment tool, either – a plastic container under a desk. But the kids all see it as a means to an end. It makes them a part of the process.
It places a higher value on loose change.
And I may not be a banker, but I think it’s a good idea. Just like a passbook
savings account.
