When Ryan was seven years old, John and I discovered he had a spending problem. As serious as a seven year old can have. It was all about Pokemon cards. Each week he would drain his money on the cute cards in hopes of striking it rich with a rare Charzard. But not wanting that spending problem to grow into a bad spending habit, we decided to introduce Ryan to compound interest. We wanted to see if the idea of…
So it happened again to me today, and it’s happened enough that I decided to write about it…and solicit your help. I was chatting with a woman I just met about this, that, and the other, when, inevitably, the question so what do you do? comes up. She’s a stay-at-home mom, nice, and I told her I was a kids’ personal finance educator. “You can teach personal finance to kids?” she, and just about everyone else, asks. Now don’t get…
I just read an interesting article that basically said that teaching financial literacy in school has no impact on kids learning to make healthy money choices. If you’re interested, here it is. The article quoted Professor Emeritus Lewis Mandell who apparently has done over 15 years of research on the topic. And I sort of agree with his assessment. One or two classes in high school is not going to create adults who all of a sudden know how to…
Teaching kids to be wise consumers requires that we have them reflect on their purchases…before they spend the money. And an easy way to do this is to teach them the Three Money Questions: Do I need it? Can I afford it? Does it add value to my life? Do I need it? This gives kids practice in thinking about the difference between needs and wants. If the item is clearly not a need, and for kids this is the…
Relevance is an unbelievable teaching tool. That’s because it’s much easier to learn something when it’s relevant to our lives. And, often, it’s more fun. Consider a child studying a unit on growing plants in her third grade class. When the teacher starts talking about how healthy plants grow, her little ears perk up. This year, her dad put her in charge of he family vegetable garden, so learning about soil, watering, and weed control was meaningful to her; it…