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Real-life money lessons

Making Money with Chores

Today’s post comes to you from my son, J! He’s here to talk to you parents about paying your kids for chores.

Hi, I’m J. Here are some reasons why you should pay your kids for doing chores. One, you won’t have to do them yourself. Two, if your kids don’t do any chores they won’t make as much money as they could be making. If you pay them to do chores, they can earn money and learn how to manage the money. Three, if your kid doesn’t do work around the house, how will they know how to do it when they grow up?

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Money conversations

Young Money Mistakes – Investing with an Investment Club

In the early 2000’s, a friend of a friend started an investment club. If you’re not familiar with the term, the SEC says:

An investment club is generally a group of people who pool their money to invest together.

To participate in the club, you would send him money each month. The group would choose and buy stocks. And ideally you’d make a profit.

Nothing could go wrong there, right?

At the time, I was in my early 20s. I knew I should be doing something with investing or stocks or the stock market, but I didn’t know what. Here was someone who supposedly knew; he was someone I liked and trusted, so I started sending him money every month. (I didn’t participate in the group otherwise and didn’t help choose the stocks.)

At some point I stopped sending him money and lost track of how much I had sent.

A few years later I got an email inquiring how much I had invested. The leader of the club was in trouble for embezzlement.

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Money conversations

An Honest Look at My Finances

Do you know how much your parents made (or make)? Or how they really spend their money? I don’t.

What about your friends? Even the close ones?

I can think of just one person whose salary I know (my signifiant other), and even then, I don’t know the details of how much he’s saving or spending in various categories or what his big picture looks like.

We tell our kids not to worry about what other people are doing, so why should we be concerned with what other people make, have or spend?

For MANY of reasons, but here are two.

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Spend wisely

The Best Christmas Gift for Kids

It’s not Christmas yet, but we’re getting ready! Last time, we talked about budgeting for Christmas gifts and today I want to talk about our favorite present from Santa EVER. In fact, it’s so cool that we still use it (two years later!).

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Real-life money lessons

Budgeting for Christmas Gifts

In one of my very first posts, I shared a short-term savings plan for Christmas gifts. Kids can totally learn to save for Christmas gifts and purchase them by themselves. I’ve found that it makes J feel good to save the money, think of thoughtful gifts, make the purchase and wrap gifts on his own.

Because we’re using FamZoo cards now, we decided to utilize both the budget and additional account features for J’s yearly Christmas gifts list.

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