Tony Townsley - Three Cups

Three Cups Three Cups By Tony Townsley and Mark St. Germain
Illustrated by April Willy 2011 by Three Cups, LLC. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Tommy Nelson. Tommy Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Illustrated by April Willy Tommy Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data An Application for Catalog-in-Publication Data has been filed. ISBN 978-1-4003-1749-3 Printed in China
11 12 13 14 15 LEO 5 4 3 2 1 Mfr: Leo Paper Products/ Heshan, China/ September 2011/ PPO: 122984 For all families. O n my fifth birthday, my parents gave me a wonderful present.
They promised it would take me on many adventures. These three cups are from our cupboard, I said. Is this my present?
Theres more, my mother explained.

Look inside the envelope. We think its time you started getting a weekly allowance, my father told me. And every year it will grow bigger, just like you will. Every week we will help you divide your allowance among the three cups, Mother said. One cup is for savings, one cup is for spending, and one cup is for giving. After we discussed how to divide the money and put it in the cups, we put them in my room.
But what about the adventures? I asked.Theyll come, my father promised. Every Saturday, week after week, I got excited when it was time to put my allowance into the three cups.

Every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday... I forgot about the money. One day my mother said, It looks like your cups are filling up. Lets see how much you have. She helped me count. I was surprised at how much was there, especially in my Savings Cup.

I have an idea, Mother said. Lets take a trip to the bank. Youre rich! said my sister. I think I want to keep saving my allowance in the cups, I told my mother. You can do that, she said. But lets ask Mr.

Duncan how the bank can help you save even more. Mr. Duncan was the president of the bank. He told me he could keep my money safe and make it grow. I asked him how. He said that when I put my money in his bank, it would be called a deposit.

It would be placed in my very own savings account, which would hold my money for me just like my Savings Cup did. Best of all, Mr. Duncan said the bank would pay me to keep my money there! The money the bank pays is called interest. He explained to me how it works. Interest sounded interesting to me. After I deposited the money from my Savings Cup, Mr.

Duncan gave me a lollipop. I asked for one for my sister, too.
Is this the adventure? I asked Mother.Its just the beginning. Do you know how much money youhave in your Spending Cup? she asked. After we got home from the bank, I counted the money in my Spending Cup. I wanted to buy a new baseball glove, but I knew I hadnt saved enough yet. Do you really want that glove? Mother asked. I do, I told her.

Mother said if I just saved my money for a little while longer, Id have enough to buy it. You could buy a doll instead, my sister said. So I waited for one week, then two, then three. By then, I had more than enough to buy my new baseball glove. I bought my sister a present with the money left over.
This is an adventure, I told my mother and father.Its not over yet, Father said. What about your Giving Cup? I was supposed to use my Giving Cup to help others.

But there were so many people who needed help, and my Giving Cup was so small. I went to my parents and asked them what I could do. A hundred things, Father said. A hundred times a hundred things, Mother told me. Then I remembered that my school was collecting food for needy families. I asked my mother if I could go with her to the grocery store.

With the money from my Giving Cup, I bought eight cans of soup. When I brought them to my teacher, Miss Phillips, she asked me if I would like to help deliver all the food our school collected. The families we helped were happy to receive our gifts. Helping them made me feel happy too. That night my father asked which cup was my favorite. My Spending Cup, I said.

No, my Savings Cup. But my Giving Cup made me feel good too.
Saving, Spending, and Giving, Father told me. Doing allthree things as you keep growing up... thats the adventure. The weeks went by. Every week I divided my allowance into my three cups. The years went by.

Every year my allowance grew. When I got my first job, mowing our neighbors yard, I also put the money I made into my three cups. By the time I was in high school, I had bought many things with money from my Spending Cup. With the money from my Giving Cup, I gave to my church and other organizations, and I helped many people. And when I graduated from high school, I used money from my savings account at the bank to help pay for the college I went to.
I packed my three cups to take with me. Today my own son turned five years old. Happy Birthday, I said.
Are you ready for an adventure?