An idea

I have some ideas that I think could work, but I don't how to make them work. OR I don't have the drive to make them work. I'm going to share some of them, please feel free to steal them. Just thank me later.

My first idea is Disney Savings account. I got the idea from watching my 4 year old daughter shove pennies into her piggy bank so she could go to "Mickey's house". The account would be for children who wanted to save money for one of the Disney theme parks. It would bare a conditional interest. That is, it would bare an interest that could only be spent in one of the Disney theme parks. You could do this with gift cards or "Disney Bucks" or something like that.

I think parents would like this. It would teach their children the value of saving and investing in interest-baring accounts.

Disney would make a small fortune off of it, for at least these three reasons: 1) With children ear-marking their dollars for Disney, more of them will end up spending it that way, as opposed to the kid with the piggy bank who, on a whim, spends on something else. 2) Some percentage of the children will end up leaving the interest on the table. Meanwhile, Disney has been allowed to reinvest those dollars over so many years and keeps all the interest. 3) All the interest they would pay out in the accounts would be immediately spent in their theme parks.

While I'm thinking of this, why wouldn't other companies who market to children (or even adults for that matter) do the same thing? For instance, would you buy an $100 CD (certificate of deposit) from Home Depot if over 12 months, you could get say 15% conditional interest on it? The interest rate is about ten percent more than you could get on any other CD. You would if you knew you had a home improvement project coming and were going to be spending that money there anyway, right?

It seems they would be happy to do it, since it makes you more likely to shop there than Lowe's or some place like that. Plus giving you a $15 gift card is not close to the same as giving cash. They get it all back. The money they would make on having you in the store spending your gift card would more than make up for the loss in inventory, it seems. Plus, there are always those guys who lose their gift cards.

And while we are at it, why don't we apply this idea to colleges. Say, Great Lakes Christian College (my alma mater) offers a "college savings account". High school students can put their money in this account which bares a conditional interest. That interest can only be used on GLCC tuition. If you could entice them with a high enough interest, you could secure a much higher sense of commitment (where your treasure is and all that). They could use the money now. And, once again, students who do not attend would forfeit their interest.

What do you think?