With Bill Dwight of FamZoo
Bill Dwight is the founder of FamZoo, a “Virtual Family Bank” that integrates prepaid card accounts with family finance software to help parents and children develop responsible money habits through hands-on experience. A father of five, Bill brings both his personal experience and that of the many FamZoo users to bat to provide a plethora of great money-smart teaching techniques that you should be able to use with your teenagers, tweens and younger kids. If you’re looking for tips to bring financial literacy to your children, then this episode is your ticket.
“Stay positive. Stay the course. The messages will get through.”
— Bill Dwight
Here are some of the topics we cover:
- However consistent you are as a parent, your children will likely display very different money behaviors.
- What to do if your kid saves too much
- The digital version of the three-jar system
- The use of an auto debit in order to teach children about bill paying in the real world
- It’s ok to loan your kids money as long as you expect to be paid back.
- Why the mantra “Let them be kids.” is a bad excuse not to teach your children about money
- The Family 401k
- Investing and the importance of repetition
- Why to start a Roth IRA when your children start working
- Automation to make the plan stick
- The importance of purpose-driven buckets — like jars or “digital” jars on FamZoo
- When to transition from jars to a digital allowance
- Why Bill likes to call an allowance a budget
- Why allowance surveys are useless
- The “chore fail” chart for teens
- Bill’s favorite kids and money books:
- The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising Kids Who Are Grounded, Generous, and Smart About Money
- The First National Bank of Dad: The Best Way to Teach Kids About Money
- Smart Money, Smart Kids: Raising the Next Generation to Win with Money
- A bonus favorite book — Tuesdays with Morrie
I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Art of Allowance Podcast. If you liked this episode, then I think you might like my conversation with Tabitha Thurman, an award-winning financial educator who has seen more than most.
Please subscribe to our show to allow me to have additional conversations with parents and discover new ideas to help us all raise money-smart, money-empowered kids. You can find out more about our movement at themoneymammals.com/aoa as well as download a sample or get a copy of my new book, The Art of Allowance. You might also want to check out The Money Mammals, our program to get your children excited about money smarts when they’re young. Until next time, I wish you and your family well as you journey forth. Thanks for listening.
