Categories
Real-life money lessons

Teach your kids to give back this holiday season

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.

Categories
Financial education

Money advice for kids that fits on an index card

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.

Categories
Financial role models

4 Quick ways to be a good money role model for your kids

Being a parent can be tough. You want so much better for your kids than you had and want them to be so much more informed than you were.

But how can you be a good role model (especially when it comes to money), when you’ve made mistakes and aren’t 100% perfect on the topic?

Don’t worry — you still can be. Here are four quick ways you can be a good money role model RIGHT NOW.

Categories
Money mindset

A recap of The Strangest Secret and how your kids can learn with audio

I just started reading EntreLeadership by financial guru, Dave Ramsey. Early on in the book, Dave talks a bit about his childhood.

My parents were in the real estate business and were bent on tutoring their children by listening to motivational tapes in the car… They said it would be good for us to learn to dream, to think big, and to know that we could be anything we wanted to be. At twelve years old, all I wanted to be was somewhere else other than stuck in the backseat of that hot car, listening to Earl Nightingale’s deep voice. He sounded like God himself, droning on about how “you become what you think about; this is the strangest secret.”

I also realize the gift my parents gave my sister and me, because I am convinced that a lot of my personal success in so many areas of my life can be traced back to being in the backseat of that Chevy Impala. As a captive audience, I learned that you have to dream and you have to do something about making those dreams happen.

Dave Ramsey, EntreLeadership

What a great idea — playing audiobooks in the car!

Categories
Money conversations

Letters from Mom: Financial Health is Only One Piece of the Puzzle

Today I’m starting a new series called Letters from Mom. At 10, there are only so many money lessons I can teach and that J can practice. However, there are things he’ll need to know later, and that’s what I want to focus on today.

Dear J,

I’m hoping that by the time you’re older, you’ll be very financially healthy.

The markers of financial health and success (in my opinion) are:

  • Managing your money well – what comes in and what goes out
  • Figuring out what’s important to you and spending wisely there
  • Saving, in general and for specific future needs and wants
  • Giving and being generous
  • Having what you need, being able to provide for yourself (and your family if you choose to have one) and being responsible

But financial health alone won’t give you the happy, fulfilling life I wish for you. There are several other areas that are important.