Piggy banks have been around for generations; they make great gifts for children. Parents and relatives give fancy piggy banks to children with kind intentions to cultivate the habit of savings and delayed gratification.

It has been a tradition: my mother gave me piggy banks and wanted me to keep my money in it, so did her mother. This is about all the ‘formal money management’ that I learnt from my mother when I was young. It was always the well intended “save for the rainy day” and “save that extra dollar in the piggy bank”.

So, what do the piggy banks teach us? Piggy banks teach us to put our extra dollars in, ignore it and let it sit at a corner to accumulate dust. The more inconspicuous it is, the better, so that we will not use the money. That also teaches us to let the money sit there and lose its value to inflation.

Piggy banks have slots meant for coins. When a kid has the extra dollars, he has to fold it small enough to squeeze it through the slot. This does not encourage kids to save bigger amounts nor respect money.

We can’t count our money without digging and banging your piggy bank so the money can come out from the little coin retriever at the base, if there is any. If otherwise, we have to smash it. So, we don’t usually get to count the money, we don’t have a clue how much we have.

When we need the money, perhaps to buy a toy we have been eying, perhaps it is the rainy day, perhaps it is to go to the bank, we have no idea how much was the limit for that purpose.

Many fancy piggy banks do not allow you to see how much money we have saved. For a very young kid, they can lose their interest before long. To their little mind, they slot the money in and it’s gone! Children need the visual encouragement. If they see it, they know they have it.

The world has been changing. In today's more sophisticated world of financial instruments, rising debt, easy credit and children who live in a high-tech, high-speed, insatiable consumerism, money has become a more complex subject. We need a modified piggy bank and a system that can better teach us money management. Good old piggy-bank-money-management strategy no longer works, not even for kids.