“Working to help parents raise money-smart kids.”
Hello, friends!
These are the final three ideas I plan to share with you in 2023. 🥲 Since the next two Mondays are holidays, I’m taking time off from the newsletter to recharge and enjoy the season.
I’ll return with a bang in 2024 by dropping a new podcast, featuring one of my intellectual heroes, on January 8th. So stay tuned!
— 1 —
This Year’s Journey: We’ve been on quite the money-smart journey together! Here are just a few highlights from 2023:
- We published 50 issues of this newsletter. That’s a grand total of 144 newsletters and 432 ideas!
- The most popular newsletters were “Are you part of the money-smart ‘camaraderie of suffering’?” (by open rate, 73.8%) and “Have you talked to your kids about ignoring media talking heads?” (by click rate, 18.1%).
- Four new credit unions became Art of Allowance Project partners. And we resigned nine current partners to multi-year deals. (If your banking institution isn’t a partner, then email me. We’ll contact them. 👍)
- Eleven experts, parents and, in many cases, both, joined me for podcast conversations. I want to give a special Joe the Monkey “Blazin’ Bananas!” shout-out to my co-host for two of those discussions, Robin Taub. If you don’t have her book, The Wisest Investment, or haven’t signed up for her newsletter, then you can do so here.
- We launched a podcast YouTube shorts series to provide money smarts in a minute.
- We released the fifth Adolescent$ “Good Money Habits” video and published our first tween and teen teaching materials for this series.
- I appeared in The New York Times and on Louisiana Federal Credit Union’s Helping You Get There™ Live Q&A Series as well as The Stacking Benjamins Show. I also spoke at the CU Leadership and CU relEVENT conferences, both in Las Vegas.
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Ideas That Resonated: On The Art of Allowance Podcast, I’ve talked about introducing kids to investing with notable experts like Chris Browning, Brad Klontz and the aforementioned Robin Taub. What I like about recent guest Will Rainey‘s approach is that it’s easy to follow. His book, Grandpa’s Fortune Fable$, also helps communicate his simple approach to kids. And it aligns with that of an absolute giant in the money-smart world, JL Collins, author of The Simple Path to Wealth. (I’m trying to get him on the podcast, BTW. 😉)
On a different money-smart note, the video that resonated with the most folks was my back-and-forth about allowance and chores with podcast guest Samantha Paxson:
Whether an allowance should be tied to chores always touches a nerve. While I think separating the two makes the most sense once you know the purpose of an allowance, it’s more important that your kids get money with which to practice. As I wrote in my book, if you need to tie chores to an allowance, then go ahead.
Additionally, since writing my book and talking with many money experts and parents, I now think moving away from an allowance can make sense if you require your tween or teen to work during the school year. I’ll be addressing this idea more in 2024.
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A Journal Entry For You: I like checklists because I forget small details without them. I use a Google Docs checklist to produce my podcast, and I have a great Evernote travel checklist that keeps me from showing up at my destination without pants. 🙈 I even use the Habit Tracker app to keep up with daily rituals, like reading for thirty minutes each morning, meditating for at least ten minutes and writing in my gratitude journal.
After many fits and stops, I began my gratitude journal in earnest this year. (Adding it to the Habit Tracker app helped.) And while I don’t journal every day, I do often enough to know it’s helped me appreciate the many wonderful people who make my work and home life invigorating. I won’t list everyone here because I’ll undoubtedly forget folks. But they all eventually end up in my private journal. Often multiple times!
I do, however, want to offer one public gratitude journal entry today — for you. I enjoy writing this newsletter, and I appreciate your taking valuable time to read it. If there’s any way I can make this newsletter better for you in the coming year, then please reply to this email now to let me know.
Happy holidays, and 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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