We impart our values to our kids through our words and our actions. Mostly our actions. Take a moment to reflect on the things you value. Integrity, compassion, honesty, persistence, courage, patience… Now think about an action that can be associated with each one. For example, returning the unpaid can of tuna you discovered in the shopping cart ~ honesty. Or volunteering to speak at the board meeting even though the thought of speaking in front of people makes you…
We all know that literacy, the ability to read and write, is an important life skill. It’s so important that we often create an environment at home to reflect this. We start reading to our kids from an early age, years before they know how to read themselves. We surround our kids with all kinds of reading materials from books, to magazines, to newspapers, to grocery lists. And then, to underscore the importance of reading even more, we read in…
When Ryan was seven years old, John and I discovered he had a spending problem. As serious as a seven year old can have. It was all about Pokemon cards. Each week he would drain his money on the cute cards in hopes of striking it rich with a rare Charzard. But not wanting that spending problem to grow into a bad spending habit, we decided to introduce Ryan to compound interest. We wanted to see if the idea of…
So it happened again to me today, and it’s happened enough that I decided to write about it…and solicit your help. I was chatting with a woman I just met about this, that, and the other, when, inevitably, the question so what do you do? comes up. She’s a stay-at-home mom, nice, and I told her I was a kids’ personal finance educator. “You can teach personal finance to kids?” she, and just about everyone else, asks. Now don’t get…
I was asked to contribute an article to a book being published on kids and financial literacy (will share more on that later). Apart from being thrilled to have been asked, I happen to love writing, so I jumped at the chance. My given topic was ‘kids and budgeting’ and is a little longer than I usually post. But I think you’ll find it easy to read. Here we go: ~ Nice. You’ve got money. And if you’re like most…