Skip to main content

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?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Gifts that Matter

When I think about my childhood, there are a few events (some good, some not so good) that really stand out. These specific incidents made big impacts on me, so they really stuck. I bet you can say the same thing. These encounters, good and bad, help shape who we are. As parents, it is our job to teach our children to be honest, upstanding, contributing members of society. This does not happen by accident. Part of this process involves the experiences we give our children–we can orchestrate PEAK moments for our families that will leave lasting impressions on young, impressionable minds. What is a PEAK moment? According to de Jager Meezenbroek, Garssen, van den Berg, van Dierendonck, Visser, and Schaufeli in the Journal of Religion and Health , “Peak experiences are often described as transcendent moments of pure joy and elation. These are moments that stand out from everyday events.” Christmas offers an EXCELLENT opportunity to offer experiences that can become “PEAK moments” in ...

Remove the Specs

You have probably heard the phrase, “looking through rose-colored glasses”? If not, allow me to introduce you to this idiom. It basically means seeing things the way you want to see them while putting a positive spin on that. It’s not a bad thing, but sometimes you need to see something for what it really is. How many of us have ever spent impetuously because we were upset or angry? “Gee, my spouse spent $500 on a (insert whatever he might buy to feed his hobby here) without asking, I should be able to spend the same on (insert what you would like to get here)!” I’m sorry/not sorry, but this is NOT a healthy way to look at things. It’s just wrong. And it’s a great example of erroneous thinking when it comes to managing money. According to Kingsford, “Thoughts create the emotions that drive us...” Oh, how true it is! She also points out how events lead to thoughts, which in turn lead to feelings. For purposes of today’s post, I’m going to call this “The Cycle.” If you want to be f...

Choose Good

Someone I know recently made a trip to the grocery store. Another shopper thought she was buying too much bread for her family of nine and assaulted her. My friend is shaken but okay. The assailant was escorted from the premises. Unfortunately, emergencies bring out the worst is some. Whenever there is some sort of trauma going on in the world (and when is there NOT these days?) all kinds of crazies are going to come out of the woodwork. Don’t fall prey to one of them. You’re probably going to get phone calls from people claiming to be from different charities that are raising money for this and that. I used to try to tell them “No” politely. Now I just hang up. Or, better yet, don’t answer numbers you do not recognize, even those with the same area code you have. If you can and want to contribute to a charity, use one you have used before. While disasters bring out the scary, they also can bring out the best of us.   Be one of them. We are all spending more time a...