A mom-of-three has revealed what happened when her family finally decided to cash-in on the piggy bank they had been putting their loose change in for the past 12 years.
Sarah from California, who asked that her full name not feature, took to TikTok posting under the handle our.california.fun to reveal what happened when they finally decided to empty Rosie the Pig and see how much they had saved.
A survey of 3,953 U.S. adults conducted by Momentive on behalf of CNBC and Acorns Invest found that 83 percent of respondents believed parents were most responsible for helping their kids learn the finer points of personal finance.
Read more: Best Savings Accounts for Kids and Teens
However, the same study found that just 15 percent of parents polled were talking to their children about household finances more than once a week, while 13 percent did it weekly and 16 percent discussed the topic every month.
While there are likely to be few if any young children eager to engage in the topic of personal finance, there are other ways to get them interested in saving.
A piggy bank is a prime example and one that others could well turn to after seeing what happened to Sarah and her family. She told Newsweek that Rosie, their piggy bank, has been in the family for years.
"My father in law made Rosie the Pig when my husband was younger out of an old propane tank," she said. "His parents used the piggy bank to save up money for each of their kids to go towards their weddings. After that it got passed down to my husband and I to save up money with our kids."
Sarah said there were never any rules about what denominations were allowed in the piggy bank. "We'd stick dollar bills in every so often and my husband stuck in a few large ones, including a $100 bill, to be a fun surprise for the kids when we opened it and they were so excited about that," she said.
She said the family always had a target in mind for when to open it. "Our goal was to wait until it was filled to the brim," she said. "Over the last year, we had been starting to finalize our plans of what we would do with the money and even though we had an inch or two to go we decided it was finally time."
Over the past few years, progress began to slow as more and more people moved to a cashless way of paying, meaning they didn't use paper money all that often. Even so, it became something that brought different generations of the family together.
"My husband's parents would bring some change when they would visit to 'feed Rosie' and my parents contributed a few times as well," Sarah said. "There were even coins in there that we got from my Grandma before she passed, which felt special to feel like she was involved when we opened it."
Sarah captured the moment they began emptying Rosie in a video shared to TikTok. She said once the piggy bank's contents had been emptied out, the family took "a little over two hours" sorting out the various coins and bills, with a few surprises discovered along the way.
"We had to pull out several tokens and pretend money our kids had slipped in when they were toddlers," she said. "Once we had separated each of the denominations into containers it took us a few days to find the spare time to count it all up." The piggy bank contained an incredible 10,782 pennies, 2,893 nickels, 3,513 dimes, 2,924 quarters, 41 half dollar and 92 dollar coins.
The video quickly went viral on TikTok, amassing over 8 million views and counting, with viewers desperate to know how much was inside. "To be honest this actually did speed up our counting process," Sarah admits. "We had been taking our time so that we could look through them for unique coins."
Eager to cater to their new online audience, Sarah and the family added up the figures before revealing that the grand total had reached $2,329.27. The big reveal was not well received by everyone.
"Once we posted the total on TikTok we got a ton of comments from people who were disappointed with how small they felt the amount was for how long we had been saving," Sarah said. "People didn't seem to realize that we were not contributing very often—this was for our infrequent spare change, not our savings account."
Read more: The Best Types of Savings Accounts to Earn Interest
However, she said any criticism misses the point of what they were doing. "It was not so much about the amount of money it came out to be, but the experience of doing this together—carrying on the family tradition of using Rosie, the anticipation of someday opening it up and doing something fun with it, and pouring out the large amount of coins on our table was a pretty epic moment ," Sarah said.
They are now in the process of closely examining the coins to look for valuable rarities. "So far we have found a silver dime, several wheat pennies, and a buffalo nickel," she said.
The plan now is to spend the money on a family road trip to see one of America's great national parks. In the meantime, Rosie is already back in place with the family ready to start saving all over again. "It's a neat way for kids to see that small coins do add up to a lot over time, and it is an easy way for little ones to feel like they are contributing," Sarah said. "It was definitely a memorable experience."
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Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Jack Beresford is a Newsweek Senior Internet Culture & Trends Reporter, based in London, UK. His focus is reporting on ... Read more
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