National Bank of Mom
During his years in elementary school, J packed his lunch almost every day. When he started middle school a few months ago, he wanted to buy; apparently the food was THE BEST EVER.
We started putting money on his lunch account but found it going really fast — and honestly it’s because we weren’t paying attention.
The holidays are a great opportunity to teach your kids about giving back. Whether items, money or time, giving to those less fortunate not only helps them but it feels good.
Think about what’s important to your family and how you can make an impact this holiday season.
There’s a great personal finance book by Helaine Olen and Harold Pollack — The Index Card: Why Personal Finance Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated. The idea is that “everything you need to know about managing your money could fit on an index card.”
Olen and Pollack aren’t the only ones who have created an index card full of money advice. Bill from FamZoo has one — The 5 Things I Want To Teach My Kids About Money Fit on a 4×6 Index Card. I also love these slide shows from the New York Times — one and another.
Reading all of the different ideas and loving the simplicity of the project, I decided that it was time to create my own.
It’s been a few years that I’ve been working with my son on personal finance. Like with other aspects of life, things have gotten a bit complicated.
Maybe you’ve experienced this with your own finances — you put different processes in place and over time, you can’t remember how the whole process works and are afraid to touch any one thing.
For over a year, our family has been using FamZoo. Now that my kiddo is starting middle school, I felt it was a good time to introduce budgeting. (Okay, actually I was really excited!)
I started with a paper budget that had five categories. That lasted for all of a hot second before we ran out of space — even kids need more than five categories.
Enter YNAB. I’ve used it for years (you’ve heard me love on it before) — why not have J give it a shot? It also seemed like a good time because he could use the YNAB app on his new cell phone.