My 5-year-old opens a savings account -- you can, too

As with too many lessons I try to teach my daughter, now 5, I end up caving in and the lesson I set out to instill is lost.

We'll see if it turns out the same way with her savings account we recently opened together, but it couldn't have been a strong lesson in how to save money when immediately after leaving the bank, we went to a store where I bought her a promised toy.

I'll get back to the toy spending in a bit, but first I'd like to focus on the good part of that afternoon -- opening a savings account in her name in an effort to teach her about saving money.