Bicycle Points for £1000

kbrumann

Reflecting on the cost of cars and children cycling to school.

Many children are not allowed to cycle to school and are chauffeured by their parents instead. My two (11 and 14 years old) would prefer the comfort of a people carrier, too. !However, for every approx. 10 km (6miles) car use they help to avoid they get one point (£1) credit, which is used to buy special things (like a PC or a hamster) to show how saving on car use or petrol can translate into tangible assets. For example a round trip to the 2 schools is 13.1 km, each child gets £1 for avoiding the car use (cycling or car share) on a trip (2 children and 2 school trips can be £4 a day for avoiding 26.2 km and almost two hours of inner city car travel). About once a week I add the “new miles” to an online spread sheet, which also helps to keep track of the money spent. In less than two years the total balance reached £1000.

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In February I was proud to write to my children:

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“Congratulations – you have accumulated £1000 in bicycle points. This translated into a desktop PC, a 19” flat screen, a top of the range graphics card, a hamster, extra memory (1 GB SDRAM), a Cherub Shirt and your current balance of £232.90.
At £1 per 10km (inner city) traffic (avoiding about 6000 car miles), the bottom line saving for the family will well exceed £1000. Saving involves making choices everyday - well done!”

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In actual terms, the cost of a 50 min 13.1 km inner city car journey passing 42 traffic lights will well exceed the £2 credit to our children. The aim of the exercise is not accurate accounting but reconnecting the individual little and avoidable car journey to the about £45 it takes to fill the tank with petrol and over time the bigger things like computers we often find deer. The same principles apply to saving in general or other issues like switching of the lights, the tap, a coffee to go, avoiding plastic bags, … Hopefully our teenagers learn that the gadgets they are playing on could have literally gone up in smoke.

BenjaG

That is a brilliant way to safe money and make the children understand how saving little over a period of time produces tangible goods. Also, if a multi-car family can get rid of one car that way it makes even bigger savings, with a car costing about £400 a month.

MX5huggy

The only change you need to make is issue 10 points a km, a point being worth 1p. This will make it seem like they earn more points.