The Bottle Kids Teach You How to Save, Spend, Give

We can learn how to manage our money from an industrious family business.

Key point:

Valentina, Romario, Isabella and Giovanni are four Sydney siblings with a job to do.

The quartet of school students are ‘The Bottle Kids‘, collectors of bottles and cans who learned money lessons early on and have stuck with them.

Along with their mum Colette, The Bottle Kids spoke with Money: Faith and Finance about the value of growing up with financial acumen at an everyday level.

Valentina, Romario, Isabella and Giovanni are four Sydney siblings with a job to do.

Colette was inspired by Scott Pape’s The Barefoot Investor. She encouraged her young family to take on Pape’s principles.

“I tried to apply that to our lives… [and] to teach the children skills with money and managing it,” Colette said.

In late 2018, Colette and her kids came up with a hands-on recycling project.

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‘The Bottle Kids’ became known in their area for regular collections of ‘Return and Earn’ bottles and cans.

Using Instagram and Facebook, they reached a wider audience and expanded their business significantly.

“We just kept doing it and more people found our page[s] and decided to help us,” Valentina told accountant Pete Burrows and Hope Mornings’ Ben McEachen, hosts of Money: Faith and Finance.

Welcome to work and never forget to donate

Growing their operation to being able to store 15 bins of recyclables at one time, Colette added that her children have experienced what it is to work.

“That is what a job is,” Colette said.

“Sometimes you don’t feel like doing it, but then the question that you also have to ask yourself is, well, do you want the money?”

“They do know and understand the value of money, the time it takes, the hard work once you’ve spent it, and the time until your next payday.”

In 2019, the ‘Bottle Kids’ were awarded the Sustainable Cities Awards by Keep Australia Beautiful.

Colette was inspired by Scott Pape’s The Barefoot Investor.

Also notable is their strategy of spend, save and donate.

From the outset, the four siblings have banded together to decide how much to keep, give away and purchase with.

These foundations for financial aplomb has the added benefit of teaching children to consider others with what we have.

“They may have supported us in the past,” Colette said about the organisations which The Bottle Kids regularly give to.

“So it’s our token of being able to pay it forward.”

Listen to the full Money: Faith and Finance episode in the player above.

All images supplied by ‘The Bottle Kids’ and used with permission.