By Nathaniel Sillin
When those first baby teeth start wobbling, you and the Tooth Fairy can combine forces to teach your kids about money.
Visa conducts an annual Tooth Fairy survey, the most recent indicates that the average price of a lost tooth is $3.19 in 2015. That puts a full set of 20 departing baby teeth around $63. The survey also found that the most common monetary gift given by the Tooth Fairy is $1, and that dads report the Tooth Fairy is more generous, giving nearly 27 percent more than what moms report.
How much should parents give? Well there’s an app for that! It’s called the Tooth Fairy app and it’s free for iOS and Android devices. It claims to help parents determine an appropriate amount for children to receive per lost tooth using a calculator, survey data and demographic factors such as gender, age, home state, family size, marital status, income and education levels to formulate how much money the Tooth Fairy is leaving in comparable households.
Additionally, the Tooth Fairy can help kids learn:
- to handle coins and currency, identifying their value – how five pennies makes a nickel and two nickels make a dime, and so on.
- to making their first purchases. It’s a chance to balance fun and priorities, wants and needs.
- Budgeting – the practice of tracking, counting and allocating spending.
Bottom line: Lost teeth are an educational gold mine for your kid. You and the Tooth Fairy can work together to make each little windfall an important lesson about money.
