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Start saving young

Making the Transition from Cash to Card

For two years now, J has been using cash, paper and pencil to manage his money. I’ve been paying monthly interest and bi-weekly allowance in cash. I’ve been calculating interest payments in Excel and emailing statements.

My goal was to help him understand cash (and math) by using hands-on, practical examples.

It’s been awesome. J started with $40 in his savings envelope in April 2016 and had over $500 by June 2018. (Pretty good for a kid with no job.)

Time to move on

When he turned 10 a few months ago, I knew it was time to learn something else. Cash is great, but how many of us really use cash and only cash every day? His financial education needed to include the responsible use of cards.

Categories
Start saving young

The Risky Business of CD Rates

Last November, J opened a CD at Ally Bank. The idea came from a big conversation we had about making his money work harder.

He invested $500 in a 2-year Raise Your Rate CD at 1.5% at Ally. This type of CD allowed him to increase the rate once during the term. (For reference, his online savings account was earning 1.25%.)

What happened

Fast foward to this spring and I saw the rates going up. And up. And up.

Categories
Money mindset

4 Reasons You Stink at Saving

Want to be a better saver? You’re in the right place. Here are four reasons you stink at saving and what to do about it.

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Spend wisely

If I Could Teach My Child Just One Financial Lesson, It Wouldn’t Be To Save

Last week I saw a tweet from Adam at Money Savvy Daddy that said, “If you could teach your child just one money/financial lesson… what would it be?”

I love to learn what people are teaching their kids so I was eager to read the responses. Not surprisingly, many people said, “Save!” Saving is definitely important, but saving without context… how can that be successful? What are you saving for?

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Start saving young

February 2018 Interest Report (and Total Savings at the Bank of Mom)

Six months ago, I published a post on how much interest J had earned since the Bank of Mom opened for business.

At the time, he had gone from $45.00 to $231.99 over the course of 15 months.

Today, just six short months later, he’s surpassed the $400.00 mark with a total of $405.21. I love exponential growth in action!

Here’s his statement for this month: