Wednesday, July 27, 2011

5 Gallons of Change

In our laundry room sits a mostly empty 5-gallon water jug. As for the part that's not empty... It's filled with our loose change. We have big dreams for this water jug, let me tell ya! In a few years, it will be our funds to go to Disney World.

Once upon a time when John and I were dating, we saved all of our change. Little did we know that it would FULLY fund our honeymoon, which was a 5 day Cruise to Key West and Mexico. It was over $1200 to pay for our cruise and our airfare and we hardly felt the sting of paying for it because we just rolled up our change. So when John saw this empty water jug that we have now, he got the wonderful idea to use it to save for something our whole family could appreciate.

I think that this is a great lesson to our children! It not only shows them that things cost money... And in this case, A LOT of it, but it also shows them to wait patiently for something really big. Brooke is so precious because when we started throwing our change into this jug she also began to throw in her spare money. She did it with such joy and excitement but it somehow broke my heart. Then, when I thought about it, I realized what an awesome teaching tool this whole jug has turned into!

This jug to me stands for so much more in our lives right now. We could go to Disney World if we wanted to but it doesn't mean we should. We really try to live a minimalistic lifestyle and enjoy living on less now so our future has a brighter picture. The massive amounts of coupons that I clip, the older cars that we drive, the infrequent trips to restaurants... These are all things that kind of fall into our "5 gallon jug" lifestyle. We are learning so many lessons on the way!

1 comment:

Tiff said...

I may have to tell Rob we have to start paying cash for everything so we'll have change to do this!!