It was my son Andrew’s birthday back in April. He got some early birthday money in March from my mom, which he quickly moved into his spending account:

My mom lives in South Africa, so she just did a bank transfer in the local currency to a bank account my wife still has there. We then credited him the equivalent in British Pounds. Bomad handles the currency conversion seamlessly.

Looking back, I should have encouraged him to move some of the money to his investment account. At the time, however, I’d let encouraging my kids to invest fall a little by the wayside, but I’ve since gotten back on track, as documented here.

As his birthday approached, he told us that he wanted an electric guitar. Since it was an expensive present, we told him that he would need to contribute the birthday money that he was likely to get from family toward the purchase. He agreed, and we managed to raise £176 in total:

(notice how he moved £135 into his spending account midway - he’d forgotten the arrangement! I got him to move it back. We should probably have named the account “Guitar money”)

We were in Dubai at the time. Before we could go out and buy the guitar, floods struck and damaged many of the roads and malls. The flooding was so severe that kids were playing in the streets like they were swimming pools:

By the time things were cleared up, it was almost time for Andrew to go back to boarding school, so we ended up not buying the guitar. It seemed like a bit of a waste to buy it and have it sit unused for a few months. And we were worried that he might have lost interest by the time he came home for the next holiday.

We visited school for the parents' weekend mid-term and were very surprised to see him playing guitar in the school band:

Now I felt bad that we hadn’t bought the guitar during the previous holiday!

So when he arrived home for the summer holiday, we finally bought the guitar for him. We also thanked the family for their contribution:

I think they appreciated knowing that their contribution helped achieve a bigger goal. It was also nice to be able to keep track of the money and its intended purpose in Bomad.