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The Ultimate Object Lesson

If you tuned in last week, you got a teaser for this week’s topic: How do we teach our kids to be smart about money?

I have always liked object lessons. They can take a lot of planning and prep work, but well-thought-out instruction can also be very compelling. Here’s a really good one.

Bring home a month’s gross earnings in cash, ones if at all possible because it makes a bigger impact. Have a list of everything that needs to be paid, including taxes, insurance premiums, retirement contributions, or anything else that comes directly from a paycheck. Remember to include all the kids’ extracurricular activities! Have your family gather around the table with the giant pile of cash, and walk them through the process of “income and outgo.” Let them count out the cash for each expenditure, see exactly where everything goes, and see what’s left over, if anything, at month’s end.

(Check the Discovery Family Adventures by downloading the Goosechase app and searching for game code ADVENTURES–we have an Adventure for that–and it will earn you points toward a family reward.)

I am willing to bet that there may be some people who run out of currency before they set aside enough to cover all the “outgo” on the list. If you fall into this category, please go back and read my earlier blog posts beginning here.

Remember, you can do hard things, like keeping track of all that cash. That wasn’t easy, was it?

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