Personal Finance For A Nine Year Old

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04242011105

A few weeks ago, one of my daughter’s friends got a new computer game, and the two have been playing it ever since. However, my daughter, Tori, cannot play it unless her friend brings it over to our house, or she goes down her her friend’s house. So, naturally she wants her own copy. She had recently spent all her saved allowance money, so she was starting from scratch saving up the $20 for the game. Last Friday afternoon, when she got home from school, she exploded through the front door, ran up to her room, and grabbed her piggy [...] Read more »

Are Your Actions Setting Up Your Children for a Lifetime of Debt?

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avoid giving in to a child be a positive role model

When my oldest son was little I was a frequent customer at places like Target, the mall, and Bed Bath & Beyond. Shopping for me meant a lot of things. It was therapeutic, especially when I was feeling depressed (oddly enough, depressed about my lack of money was often the case). It was in search of bargains, which in hindsight ended up not being much of a bargain by the time I left. And it was a social activity. My then-husband and I would go shopping whenever we were bored. We said it was just to look around but we [...] Read more »

When is it the Right Time to Let Your Kids be Financially Responsible?

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young drivers

I am not the kind of person who likes to tell other parents how they should do their job. Everyone has their own methods when it comes to raising children and in most situations there is no right or wrong way of doing things. But conversations between parents are often an invaluable source of ideas, so I’m going to offer some thoughts on the process of how to help your children become financially independent as they grow into young adults. The behaviors that turn children into fiscally prudent adults can begin at a very young age. From spending and saving [...] Read more »

Do Our Parents Money Decisions Define Us?

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immigrants

From a young age I was given the ability to choose how I would spend my money. I was raised in a “typical” family unit with two hard working parents and a younger sibling. We weren’t rich, we weren’t poor we were considered middle class, I suppose. My dad worked long hours as a small business owner (he was a mechanic) and my mom worked part-time so she could take care of us. The family business was passed onto him by my grandfather who came to the states with nothing except the clothes on his back. Read more »

Are You Teaching Your Children to Avoid a Financial Stomach Ache?

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curds and fries

Photo credit: newyork808 During the last week of school, my twelve year old son went on a class trip to the Nickelodeon Universe theme park inside the Mall Of America. When I picked him up from school, he told me that he didn’t go on any rides the last hour because he didn’t feel well, and still didn’t. Trying to determine the cause of his stomach issue, I asked him what he had for lunch.  The conversation went something like this: Tristan:  “I wanted Subway, but there wasn’t one in the food court where we went to eat. So we [...] Read more »

Got Kids? Start Teaching Them Solid Financial Principles

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ENEMY-OF-DEBT004

Got kids? If so, you should really consider teaching them solid financial principles as early as age  4. (we started at around three and a half) Why? Well, because if you’re anything like most parents, you desperately want to help your children avoid what you have had to learn the hard way. DEBT SUCKS! Give them a rockin’ head start by helping them understand the money principles that will keep them from making avoidable financial mistakes. Help them: learn how money works learn about debt and why it should be avoided about what expenses are learn about savings and why [...] Read more »

Teaching Kids About Money – Here’s What Helps

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Kids and Money

Photo Credit: Memory_Freak This is a guest post written by Clair Schwan. I can’t say that I have a lot of experience with kids, but I have a lot of experience with money, and part of my childhood involved what I thought was a good training program about the value of money and how it might best be handled. I had four of the best teachers I could possibly ask for – two grandparents who were young adults in the Great Depression, and two parents who grew up in it and struggled through the challenging economic times surrounding World War [...] Read more »

Children and Money: A Basic Plan To Teach Financial Responsibility

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Kid Finance 101

Have you been wondering how to start teaching your children about money? If you are counting on the schools to give them anything in the form of financial training, you’re wasting your time. You’re better off doing it yourself. If schools taught solid financial principles, many of us would have never got into the financial trouble we ended up in. To make matters worse not only did we make a mess ourselves, but for most of us–myself included, we continued the stupidity for more than a decade. I plan to stop that nonsense right now with my children. As Dave [...] Read more »