“Working to help parents raise money-smart kids.”
Hello, friends,
Happy New Year! 🥳
One of my 2022 goals was to publish this newsletter regularly. In keeping with this plan, I managed to send out one installment every week before I took my short holiday hiatus. And I’m looking forward to continuing this consistency as we venture into 2023.
To kick things off, though, I thought it might be useful to reflect on the most popular newsletter content from 2022 as voted by your attention (in the form of newsletter opens and link clicks).
For newer subscribers, this is a chance to learn about content you likely haven’t sampled. And for established subscribers, I hope you find these selections useful to revisit.
Of course, all of my past newsletters are easily accessible on our site.
— 1 —
Why do we work with credit unions?: More of you opened this newsletter than any other issue I sent last year.
This was a fun edition to write because I shared The Money Mammals’ origin story, why partnering with credit unions seemed to make obvious sense and why we recently re-envisioned our program to work better for families.
What’s more, I laid the groundwork for my essay and short-form podcast, “No Single Point of Failure.”
— 2 —
Worried that you’re “winging it” as you’re raising money-smart kids?: More of you clicked on a link in this newsletter than in any other installment.
In it, I shared several insights from one of my favorite books of 2022, Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. I also relayed how Burkeman’s wisdom applies to raising money-smart kids.
For example:
“It’s alarming to face the prospect that you might never truly feel as though you know what you’re doing, in work, marriage, parenting, or anything else.”
As a parent, I encounter this “imposter syndrome” regularly. And the more I speak with fellow parents and experts, the more I discover this feeling is universal. Still, we must persevere! Because we have an important job to do: raising happy, healthy, independent kids.
Now that my own daughters are in their late teens, I am often reminded of the aphorism, “The days are long, and the years are short.” Since those years seem to fly by so quickly, particularly during a pandemic, we mustn’t let daily concerns paralyze us. Instead, we must try to harness our worries or feelings of overwhelm as fuel to power our journeys. â›˝
— 3 —
Does your family need a budget to live a money-smart life?: More of you who opened this email clicked on the links I shared within it, an indication that its content lived up to the promise of its subject line.
For this issue we’re going way back to last January, when I released an essay I’d been itching to write that addresses two crucial questions:
- Do we really need a budget in order to live a money-smart life? 🧮
- If we don’t teach our kids to budget, then will they be forever lost, endlessly wandering the empty desert of financial illiteracy? 🌵
I felt the need to call out the “Budget Mafia” because of a simple reality: Most people fail at making budgets. Still, budgets are almost universally trumpeted as the bedrock principle of financial literacy.
While I know budgets can work wonderfully for a small subset of folks, it’s time we recognize — and focus on — higher-order principles like the importance of living beneath our means and taking advantage of the power of time (compounding). If our kids follow these principles, then they will almost certainly learn to use money as a tool they can use to craft meaningful lives.
Well, there you have it!
Your first 202-“3 Ideas to Share & Save.”
Until next week, enjoy the journey.
John, Chief Mammal
P.S. Please consult with a financial or investment professional before engaging in any decisions that might affect your own financial well-being.
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