The power of the piggy bank

I didn’t have a piggy bank when I was a child. But, I did have a bank. Instead of a porcelain porcine, my coin repository was a fiendishly designed miniature cash register. It would accept pennies, but it only acknowledged the receipt of nickels, dimes, and quarters by revealing the total amount in a window next to the register arm. It was surprisingly complex given that this was many decades prior to the invention of computer chips.

The contents only could be retrieved through a spring-loaded cash drawer that opened when the devilish instrument of torture perceived that it had been fully fed with $10 worth of silver coins. The spring that held the door tight was one tough spring. Trust me, I tried every tool on my dad’s workbench to try to open the door before it was ready. This bank demanded patience, and as a 5-year-old without an allowance, it was painful to wait and then wait and then wait some more until I had accumulated $10.

Once I was in grade school, my classmates and I opened our own accounts with a bank that provided the service to the school. I assume the bank hoped they would harvest a bountiful crop of future customers to whom they could offer mortgages and auto loans. On Wednesdays, we all arrived with our handful of coins, and the teacher recorded the amounts in our little bankbooks. I can’t recall how the interest was calculated, but we all understood that in some mysterious fashion our money was making money.

My diabolical cash register bank and my grade school bank account provided me with an introduction to the concept of saving for the future that has stayed with me to this day. It turns out that those two exercises in financial health may have contributed to my physical health.

In a recent New York Times article ("Your 401(k) Is Healthy. So Maybe You Are, Too." Aug. 16, 2014), I learned about a study published in the journal Psychological Science that found that regular contributors to their 401(k)’s were more likely to take steps to improve their health. Two business school professors at Washington University, St. Louis, studied 200 workers at an industrial laundry business. The subjects were given a baseline health evaluation that included blood tests. When the workers were informed of the results of the evaluation, they also were offered suggestions on how they could address any concerning findings. In follow-up, the regular 401(k) contributors as a group had a 27% improvement in their lab results, while noncontributors continued to suffer health declines (Psychol. Sci. 2014 June 27 [doi: 10.1177/0956797614540467]).

As a pediatrician, wouldn’t you like to know if these healthier investors were born that way? Or, were there factors in their childhood that molded them into adults who will choose to invest in the future, of both their finances and their health? We didn’t talk about money in my family as I was growing up, nor have my wife and I raised the topic with our children. But, we all fund our IRAs and try to lead healthy lifestyles. Were there subliminal messages that my parents conveyed to me and then I passed on to my children?

This country is going through a spell in which saving has slipped out of fashion. This study from St. Louis suggests that it may be linked to our difficulty in getting patients to take better care of themselves. Most of you know that we ask pediatricians to address too many issues at well-child visits. But, maybe we should begin asking every 4-year-old if he or she has a piggy bank. Maybe we even should be giving out piggy banks the way we give out children’s books, and take a moment to discuss the concept of saving. If we can convince this next generation that the future is something worth investing in now, then maybe they will be more receptive to advice about their health when they are adults.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including "How to Say No to Your Toddler." E-mail him at [email protected].

I didn’t have a piggy bank when I was a child. But, I did have a bank. Instead of a porcelain porcine, my coin repository was a fiendishly designed miniature cash register. It would accept pennies, but it only acknowledged the receipt of nickels, dimes, and quarters by revealing the total amount in a window next to the register arm. It was surprisingly complex given that this was many decades prior to the invention of computer chips.

The contents only could be retrieved through a spring-loaded cash drawer that opened when the devilish instrument of torture perceived that it had been fully fed with $10 worth of silver coins. The spring that held the door tight was one tough spring. Trust me, I tried every tool on my dad’s workbench to try to open the door before it was ready. This bank demanded patience, and as a 5-year-old without an allowance, it was painful to wait and then wait and then wait some more until I had accumulated $10.

Once I was in grade school, my classmates and I opened our own accounts with a bank that provided the service to the school. I assume the bank hoped they would harvest a bountiful crop of future customers to whom they could offer mortgages and auto loans. On Wednesdays, we all arrived with our handful of coins, and the teacher recorded the amounts in our little bankbooks. I can’t recall how the interest was calculated, but we all understood that in some mysterious fashion our money was making money.

My diabolical cash register bank and my grade school bank account provided me with an introduction to the concept of saving for the future that has stayed with me to this day. It turns out that those two exercises in financial health may have contributed to my physical health.

In a recent New York Times article ("Your 401(k) Is Healthy. So Maybe You Are, Too." Aug. 16, 2014), I learned about a study published in the journal Psychological Science that found that regular contributors to their 401(k)’s were more likely to take steps to improve their health. Two business school professors at Washington University, St. Louis, studied 200 workers at an industrial laundry business. The subjects were given a baseline health evaluation that included blood tests. When the workers were informed of the results of the evaluation, they also were offered suggestions on how they could address any concerning findings. In follow-up, the regular 401(k) contributors as a group had a 27% improvement in their lab results, while noncontributors continued to suffer health declines (Psychol. Sci. 2014 June 27 [doi: 10.1177/0956797614540467]).

As a pediatrician, wouldn’t you like to know if these healthier investors were born that way? Or, were there factors in their childhood that molded them into adults who will choose to invest in the future, of both their finances and their health? We didn’t talk about money in my family as I was growing up, nor have my wife and I raised the topic with our children. But, we all fund our IRAs and try to lead healthy lifestyles. Were there subliminal messages that my parents conveyed to me and then I passed on to my children?

This country is going through a spell in which saving has slipped out of fashion. This study from St. Louis suggests that it may be linked to our difficulty in getting patients to take better care of themselves. Most of you know that we ask pediatricians to address too many issues at well-child visits. But, maybe we should begin asking every 4-year-old if he or she has a piggy bank. Maybe we even should be giving out piggy banks the way we give out children’s books, and take a moment to discuss the concept of saving. If we can convince this next generation that the future is something worth investing in now, then maybe they will be more receptive to advice about their health when they are adults.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including "How to Say No to Your Toddler." E-mail him at [email protected].

I didn’t have a piggy bank when I was a child. But, I did have a bank. Instead of a porcelain porcine, my coin repository was a fiendishly designed miniature cash register. It would accept pennies, but it only acknowledged the receipt of nickels, dimes, and quarters by revealing the total amount in a window next to the register arm. It was surprisingly complex given that this was many decades prior to the invention of computer chips.

The contents only could be retrieved through a spring-loaded cash drawer that opened when the devilish instrument of torture perceived that it had been fully fed with $10 worth of silver coins. The spring that held the door tight was one tough spring. Trust me, I tried every tool on my dad’s workbench to try to open the door before it was ready. This bank demanded patience, and as a 5-year-old without an allowance, it was painful to wait and then wait and then wait some more until I had accumulated $10.

Once I was in grade school, my classmates and I opened our own accounts with a bank that provided the service to the school. I assume the bank hoped they would harvest a bountiful crop of future customers to whom they could offer mortgages and auto loans. On Wednesdays, we all arrived with our handful of coins, and the teacher recorded the amounts in our little bankbooks. I can’t recall how the interest was calculated, but we all understood that in some mysterious fashion our money was making money.

My diabolical cash register bank and my grade school bank account provided me with an introduction to the concept of saving for the future that has stayed with me to this day. It turns out that those two exercises in financial health may have contributed to my physical health.

In a recent New York Times article ("Your 401(k) Is Healthy. So Maybe You Are, Too." Aug. 16, 2014), I learned about a study published in the journal Psychological Science that found that regular contributors to their 401(k)’s were more likely to take steps to improve their health. Two business school professors at Washington University, St. Louis, studied 200 workers at an industrial laundry business. The subjects were given a baseline health evaluation that included blood tests. When the workers were informed of the results of the evaluation, they also were offered suggestions on how they could address any concerning findings. In follow-up, the regular 401(k) contributors as a group had a 27% improvement in their lab results, while noncontributors continued to suffer health declines (Psychol. Sci. 2014 June 27 [doi: 10.1177/0956797614540467]).

As a pediatrician, wouldn’t you like to know if these healthier investors were born that way? Or, were there factors in their childhood that molded them into adults who will choose to invest in the future, of both their finances and their health? We didn’t talk about money in my family as I was growing up, nor have my wife and I raised the topic with our children. But, we all fund our IRAs and try to lead healthy lifestyles. Were there subliminal messages that my parents conveyed to me and then I passed on to my children?

This country is going through a spell in which saving has slipped out of fashion. This study from St. Louis suggests that it may be linked to our difficulty in getting patients to take better care of themselves. Most of you know that we ask pediatricians to address too many issues at well-child visits. But, maybe we should begin asking every 4-year-old if he or she has a piggy bank. Maybe we even should be giving out piggy banks the way we give out children’s books, and take a moment to discuss the concept of saving. If we can convince this next generation that the future is something worth investing in now, then maybe they will be more receptive to advice about their health when they are adults.

Dr. Wilkoff practiced primary care pediatrics in Brunswick, Maine, for nearly 40 years. He has authored several books on behavioral pediatrics, including "How to Say No to Your Toddler." E-mail him at [email protected].