This is a great question. It was sent it by Elisa, one of our licensees in Monterey, Mexico. Her specific question was:

Question:

Why aren’t the money jar percentages aligned exactly with the money game expenses? For example, why isn’t there savings bag in the money game and why is donation 10% in the money game and not 5% like in the Jar system.

Answer:

First, remember the the money jars aren’t actually a part of The Money Game, unless you want to make them a part of the game. They are an optional, extra activity that we teach in our Camp Millionaire programs.

The Money Game expenses, however, are very close to the money jar percentages if you look at them.

If you take the following Expense bags: Living ($100), Rent ($300), Credit Card ($100), Car Payment ($100) and add them up, you get $600 or 60% of the paycheck.

Add in 10% ($100) each for Education, Play and Donation and you have $900 total expenses or 90% of their paycheck.

The game register (envelope) represents their saving/freedom jar because they use that money that they ‘pay themselves first’ to both invest and make sure they always never some ‘just in case.’

We tried to align them once but it didn’t work well. It’s easy to rip off $100 but when we started messing around with $50 (1/2 of one strip) it was just a pain so we made it close. I guess at some point, we could change donation to 10% in The Money Jars and making Saving and Freedom both 10% but for now, we’re just going to leave them the way they are.

Bottom Line

The kids and teens don’t generally remember the details anyway. It’s about the philosophy and the principles…not the details when they are young. We want them to remember that:

Money has more than one job, i.e., spending.

You have to invest money to make it grow.

You’re not financially free until your passive income stream is greater than your expenses.

You should never let your account get to $0!

And a whole lot more that they learn in the game.

Hope that helps…Elisabeth