My eldest daughter and I love Star Wars. We are the fans in our house so pretty much every Friday night we’ll banish my wife and youngest daughter out of the room and watch a Stars Wars movie together.
One night we talked about how it would be fun if we could use Star Wars to help teach kids about money for Blue Tree. We just needed a good story! This is when my daughter mentioned that she has been reading Aesop’s fables as part of her school work so we thought we could use one of the fables as a base for our story.
We decided on the ‘Tortoise and the Hare’ Fable for our first story.
A quick recap of this Aesop’s fable.
The Tortoise and Hare decided to have a race. The Hare sprinted off and was so far ahead that he decided to take a quick nap to allow the Tortoise to catch up. The Tortoise just kept on walking non-stop the whole time. When the Hare woke up from his nap, he saw the Tortoise close to the finish line. Before he could catch up, the Tortoise had won the race. “The race is not always to the swift.”.
Instead of the Tortoise and the Hare, for our story we decided to use Yoda (the Tortoise) and Darth Maul (the Hare). This was largely due to the fact that we have these toy characters at home!
I note that in Star Wars they call money ‘Credits’.
Our Story: Yoda and Darth Maul
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …
Darth Maul saw Yoda in his swamp and said “Your swamp is so disgusting, you must be rubbish at looking after your credits (money) if you have to live in a place like this!”
“Living here, I like. Everything I need, it has.” replied Yoda “I’m actually very good with money and happy to prove it to you. Let’s see who can get more credits over a period of time”.
Darth Maul was very amused at the idea of a competition but thought it could be fun to show up Yoda.
They agreed to each start with 10 credits and see who would have the most after 5 years.
Darth Maul loves to gamble so he flew to the city of Canto Bight on the planet Cantonica to play a game of Sabaac against Hans Solo. He played a few games and managed to win. He now had 15 credits and still had 5 years to go!
He thought he’d see what Yoda was doing with his credits. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Yoda was gardening. Apparently, Yoda had given away all 10 of his credits and had bought some seeds.
Darth Maul thought the competition was over and decided to go partying all over the galaxy with his Storm Trooper friends.
After a few years of partying, Darth Maul still had most of his credits and knew he could always go back and play more Sabaac to get more if he needed.
Before that he checked up on Yoda. Yoda’s seeds had turned into large trees.
Darth Maul said “You know the competition was to get the most credits, not who can grow the most trees right?!”
“That, I do know. That is the reason I have just sold these trees to my friends, the Ewoks, for their new homes for 30 credits!”.
Darth Maul panicked. He now realized he was far behind Yoda in their competition. He went back to the Sabaac tables to try and increase his amount of credits, however, this time he came up against Chewbacca who beat him easily. So instead of making more credits, he actually lost all his credits.
Yoda declared victory in the competition.
“Patience, making money takes”
Summary
I hope you take the time to read this story to your kids.
At the end of the story make sure they understand the different lessons that Darth Maul learns. These include:
Don’t judge how good someone is with money based on what they have. They might not like buying the same things as you ('Keeping up with the Jones’')
Whilst gambling can make you money in the short-term, over the long-term you are most likely to lose your money (Gambling blog)
Making money requires patience, like Yoda growing his trees, is the third rule of wealth (The 3 Rules of Wealth)
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Thanks for reading!
Will