Josh and Joey were cousins who always talked about having their own lawn service one day.

The summer that they both turned 15, they decided it was time to do what they always talked about...start mowing lawns for money.

Josh liked to save his money, so he decided to put his lawn service earnings into a savings account. He decided to put 10% aside to give to his church, keep another 10% in a jar at home for things like the movies or snacks whenever he'd want to do something, and the rest would go into his savings account. The savings account earned 2% interest. At the end of the summer, Josh had saved $2,700! Since he didn't need the money for a while, he decided to take $2,500 of the money and buy a $5,000 bond with it. After all, his grandparents bought him bonds on several occasions, so he thought that they must be a good thing.

Joey liked money and liked to buy things. Joey spent his money for the first few weeks and then he overheard his parents talking about how the stock market was doing so well that their investments in stocks were going to allow them to take the whole family on a cruise over Christmas. He talked with his parents and decided he might be able to make even more money if he too invested in stocks. So he started to save his lawn earnings and saved up $1,000 at the end of the summer. He used the money to invest in stocks and thought he would just cash in his stocks in a few weeks after they were worth maybe double or triple what he invested and have as much as Josh.

Fall came and the lawn service was winding down.

Josh had saved enough money to do some fun things for a while if he wanted because he had set aside 10% of his earnings for that type of thing.

Joey had saved over the summer and that was HARD and he was tired of saving so he used the last few lawn cutting jobs to buy himself a new video gaming system and games. After all, he deserved it for all that hard work over the summer! Plus, he was keeping an eye on his stocks and he'd be rich soon.

Months passed and it was time for Christmas. Joey checked on his stocks and had lost half of his investment, the stocks were not performing as expected. He now had no way to buy Grandma the present he had bragged to her about. Josh had been disciplined in setting aside 10% of his earnings for fun and decided to give Grandma a gift that he bought with his own money. He was so proud to be able to give Grandma something that he worked so hard to buy for her. Joey told Grandma that he would buy her something when he cashed in his stocks soon and it would be an even better present than Josh's. Grandma was proud of them both.