We all know that literacy, the ability to read and write, is an important life skill. It’s so important that we often create an environment at home to reflect this. We start reading to our kids from an early age, years before they know how to read themselves. We surround our kids with all kinds of reading materials from books, to magazines, to newspapers, to grocery lists. And then, to underscore the importance of reading even more, we read in…
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…
There was a huge graphic of a cell phone on the front page of the Sacramento Bee this morning. It was all about the love affair tweens and teens have with their cell phones confirmed in a study by Pew Internet and American Life Project. If you have a tween or teen, this is not front-page news to you. But I thought it the perfect opportunity to re-print here a section from Raised for Richness, my parent kids and money…
Ryan just spent $204.44. He didn’t do it lightly. That’s because he knows just how long it took him to earn that money. His one-day-a-week paper route earns him $11/week. That’s 19 weeks of folding and throwing papers. But he also gets $10/week in allowance. Enough to help him get some of the things he wants, but not everything. (That explains the paper route.) With the allowance, his total time was reduced in half. To a 15-year old, that’s still…
I hung out in a second grade classroom last week to talk about saving money and then have the students make their own Money Jar. It was a fun lesson and the Money Jars turned out unbelievable. Kids and their creativity never ceases to amaze me. While we were discussing money issues, I asked the students how they got money. Of course, the usual answers came up…allowance, chores, birthday money. Then one little guy raised his hand and volunteered, “You have to spend…