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Giving the kids money is part of retirement planning for many families. You can't go wrong. Money from Grandma always fits, and from Grandpa, green is always the right color.
Here, with a little help from Safeway and the grocer's gift card division, Blackhawk, are six great ways to make giving monetary gifts more fun. Start your own retirement tradition.
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Frame it. Buy an inexpensive frame -- or find an old one in the attic -- and put a pretty gift card or Benjamin Franklin's $100 mug right in the middle. There is an art to gift-giving!
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Stuff the piggy. Stuff a piggy bank with coins or a mix of coins and folding money. Make sure some of the green stuff -- or a gift card -- sticks out the top.
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Mark the message with money. Make a book even more meaningful by bookmarking a page with a check, a gift certificate or savings bond.
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Share a cup of Andy. Put a $20 portrait of Andrew Jackson in an empty paper coffee cup with a lid. If you really want to be cute, make a faux iced frappe. Safeway says fill a clear drink cup with coffee beans and add cotton balls for the whipped cream. Put the cash or gift card in the beans.
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Bury it. Put cash or a gift card in a zip-style sandwich bag and hide it in an irresistible bucket of salty, buttery popped corn. You can be assured that eventually it will be found. This is also a good way to give movie tickets.
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Box it up. Serve family members boxed lunches packed with money surprises.
when my son turned 21 I gave him a home made card saying money doesn't grow on trees. His gift, however, was a money tree. I bought a piece of styrofoam and some florist picks (the ones they use to attach the card) and put various denominations of new bills to make his tree. He loved it so much it took him over a year to actually take some of the money off and spend it.
We roll various denominations up to a $100.00 in white paper and put them in a jar. After our meal the jar gets passed and everyone gets to pick one and opens to see what they got. Everyone loves this kind of gift
Last year I looked up ways to fold $20 dollar bills into origami shirts, dresses, boots, etc. on Youtube. Then I placed the origami shirt into a box and gave it to them. It's fun way to give a shirt that you know will be the color and size they want.
put any amount of new bills on top of one another and paste one end to make a pad. People somtimes don't believe they are real. They all thought it was clever.
We sent our 17yr old daughter on a scavenger hunt around the house finding $ in each place. She loved it!
Only problem with some of the cute ways of giving is it can backfire,ie. misplace the tissue box. Many years ago to be cute I hid several silver dollars for my kids. Put them in a real safe place, where I new only they or I would find them. I was about 40 years old. To date they or I have never found them. There still in a real safe place. namvet
I have 5 + 3 great grand children. I bought them each an M+M's candy cane and tied a $5 bill around them. The younger ones liked the candy the older ones liked the $.
One year, we taped 50 one dollar bills together on the long side and then folded them all up accordion style. Then bought a box of kleenex, took out a short stack, put in the money and taped the top dollar to the kleenex and put the kleenex carefully back in the box. By the time they pull out about 10 kleenex, the dollars start pulling out. They still remember that.