“Working to help parents raise money-smart kids.”
Hi there!
Welcome to another edition of 3 Ideas to Share and Save.
We have so much going on, and I’m excited to share my work with you.
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The Art of Allowance Project: We launch next week! We’re all working furiously behind the scenes to bring you our re-envisioned program, which is designed to help parents raise money-smart kids. It will be available through our credit union partner network across the US.
Our new program features the characters you know well, The Money Mammals, and now we’re adding more robust material to help support parents on their own journeys to raise money-smart kids. Whether you’re a reader, viewer, listener or all three, we’ll have you covered. And for the first time, we’re offering content for tweens and teens. Here’s a sneak peek:
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Your Money Scripts: Brad Klontz writes in his book Money Mammoth, “If we intend to make smarter financial decisions and raise financially savvy children, this book makes it clear we must first start with ourselves [my emphasis].”
Knowing your money scripts helps you uncover the largely unconscious beliefs driving your financial habits, both good and bad. Becoming aware of these scripts is the first step towards changing them, something many of us will want to do to be better models for our kids vis-à-vis money. For example, I scored high in Money Vigilance and low in Money Status.
It’s taken a lot of work over the past two decades to adjust my own beliefs around money and status, and it’s one reason why I think I’ve learned just as much, if not more, than my kids during the process of trying to raise them to be money-smart. This is such an important point that it’s something we’ll be helping parents grapple with extensively through The Art of Allowance Project that I mentioned above. I believe that no matter our expertise, we can all raise money-smart kids. Coming to terms with our money scripts is part of that process.
If you want to know more, then be on the lookout for my new Art of Allowance podcast conversation with Brad, which drops March 8th. In the meantime, you can get your own money script on his site.
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Controlled Consumption: With the help of a fellow writer at Compound Writing, I changed the Reasonable Consumerism idea I presented in the last edition to Controlled Consumption. The term is not only alliterative (always helpful if you want an idea to stick) but also much clearer. Here’s a snippet from the piece:
Consumption can feel like a competitive sport.
As parents, we want to help our kids get out of the arena.
We want to help them discover the right amount of controlled consumption.
Incidentally, I wanted to give a shout-out to Stew Fortier and Dan Hunt at Compound Writing. Compound Writing brings the internet’s top authors, editors and experts together to work collectively and compound their writing improvement over time. They recently received funding from Y Combinator, so the future is bright. I hope it continues to help me bring you better and better content.
Thanks again for taking time to read this newsletter, which I’m trying to grow with your help. If any of these ideas resonate with you, then I’d appreciate it if you could share them with friends and colleagues.
Enjoy the journey.
John
The Chief Mammal
