Look after the pennies and the pounds won't even buy you a pizza

Simon Read encouraged his children to collect coins in the street - but their pile of pennies didn't add up to much

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A couple of years ago, I decided to try to teach my children a little about the value of money by encouraging them to pick up any coins they found on the street and bring them home. I did the same, and each time any of us found a coin I made a relatively big deal of putting it into a small faux leather pouch.

In London, it is fairly common to find the odd coin or two on the pavement, particularly near The Independent's offices in Kensington, where I imagine well-heeled tourists simply abandon small items of British currency after fumbling with and then dropping it while fishing around for a tip for their cab driver.

I promised my boys that our "found" money would grow and eventually we would have enough to buy all of us a little treat. My plan was to demonstrate that even the odd penny can be worth something when put together with several of its mates. All right, I knew that it would take hundreds of discoveries, but I was expecting that we would be retrieving plenty of 2p pieces, 5ps, 20ps and even the odd pound.

For a while, it was a great game. My boys would proudly hold up whatever coin they'd found and we'd put it into the pouch. I'd do the same when I found cash on the pavement – which proved a pretty regular occurrence in the West End of London. So frequent that it clearly wasn't just the tourists happily walking away from dropped currency.

We discussed what we would do with our bounty when we had enough, and decided we would treat ourselves at our local pizzeria. At about £7 to £8 a pizza, that would cost the family about £30 – and in my head our "free" money would probably yield enough to get the kids ice-cream as well.

As the weeks turned into months and the pouch became heavier, my children were keen to count up how much our stash was worth. I delayed doing so as I wanted the money-saving exercise to have as much impact as possible, and for them to be surprised by how much cash we had earned just by being observant.

Eventually, the pouch grew promisingly heavy, so one day I announced: "We'll count it up this weekend." Saturday came and, after the morning's football, we made room on the kitchen table and I opened the pouch and spread all the coins across it.

It looked a glorious sight – all that money that had sprung from nothing. I could see some silver coins glinting among the many bronze ones and was confident we would surpass our pizza target.

But as we piled up the pennies, it became clear we were heading for disappointment. We did have more than a hundred coins but with most of them being of the smallest denomination, our total came to just £4.97. Our treats became packets of sweets, but I was determined to find other simple ways to teach the value of saving...