“Working to help parents raise money-smart kids.”
Hello, friends!
I just returned from my hiking trip to Grand Teton National Park. I’m always surprised how much a short getaway fires up my brain.
I think you’re going to enjoy this week’s “3 Ideas to Share & Save.”
— 1 —
Don’t Sweat Not Being An Accountant: I was drawn into this “profession” of engaging kids and empowering parents around money-smart learning not because I was a money expert, but because I had below-average money-smart instincts. As I’ve told you before, I’ve learned a lot on this journey.
Whatever money-smarts I’ve acquired comes courtesy of my wife, who I think began paying herself first before she took her first breath, frugal parental (and grandparental) modeling, reading wonderful writers like Ramit Sethi and Morgan Housel, and, of course, through hard-earned experience.
It’s easy to beat yourself up if you don’t see the world through an accountant’s glasses – in spreadsheets and numbers. And while I appreciate them, particularly my business and personal accountants, their spreadsheet wizardry often blinds them to the struggles of money muggles like the rest of us. In fact, I’ve noticed that many financial industry professionals suffer from this blind spot.
The benefit of having evolved from spendthrift to saver is that I better understand when one of our kids is acting more like the young me. I can see she’ll need more guidance, and I’m confident our ongoing money conversations will be helpful in her journey. (The journey doesn’t end when they leave the nest, BTW.)
Before I get a flood of responses from irate CPAs, I want to again express my gratitude to all the accountants helping us on our money-smart journeys. Wonderful people like PodFriend Robin Taub. 🙏🏻
But don’t sweat it if you don’t see the world in the same way. We all have something to offer our kids when we engage in open, honest money conversations.
— 2 —
Listen To Your Teacher: Recomendo is a wonderful weekly email newsletter that always delivers at least one useful or surprising (often both) nugget of information.
In this issue, Claudia Dawson, one of Recomendo’s three contributors, shared a list of the top advice from various professions, including this one from a teacher:
Read to your kids from infancy, make books commonplace, and point out things in the pictures. This helps them develop literacy skills from an early age.
I can’t help but nerd out here. Academics refer to this as emergent literacy. This is the wonky term for why we read to our kids from day one.
This same concept exists in financial literacy. In fact, it was dubbed emergent financial literacy by fellow financial nerds Martha McCormick and David Godstead. They’re real nerds, though. Both have PhDs. I’m just playing a nerd in this newsletter. 😉
Emergent financial literacy is why we don’t wait until we start an allowance at age five to begin a money conversation with our kids. We should be prepared from pretty close to day one for the questions and experiences to come. For example, give your three-year-old a buck or two when you go to the store. Let them buy something and pay for it at the cashier. Start her experiential learning early.
There’s research suggesting money habits are formed by age seven. And while it’s often misinterpreted to mean all is lost if you wait until eight, it does underscore the importance of starting early.
— 3 —
Not All Sliders Are Hamburgers: Sliders, those delicious appetizer mini-sandwiches, come in many varieties: chicken, fish and…open conversation?
Huh?
Okay. You can’t eat these sliders, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t nourishing.
I like using visual sliders to illustrate concepts that operate on a continuum. I wrote about this first slider in my essay about controlled consumption.
I’m not suggesting we all give up our possessions and head to Walden Pond, but I think anyone reading this newsletter is thinking about moving their family sliders away from outrageous consumption and towards minimalism. I call this approach controlled consumption.
Picking up where we left off in idea #2, we all need to find our place on the conversation slider:
While most of us won’t adopt the radically honest approach to finances and money in which you share every financial detail of your life with your kids (We certainly don’t!), we can all agree that moving our sliders toward more open conversations is in line with our mission to raise money-smart kids.
The rule of threes tells me to offer you one more slider:
Our goal is to release our kids into the wild as money-smart as possible. There are many different approaches. PodFriend James Robert Lay, who doesn’t believe in allowance, is on the extreme right side of this slider. David Owen, who considers school his kids’ jobs, was more to the left.
For better or worse, our family’s slider was more in line with Owen’s approach. We felt our kids had far too many activities for us to require them to hold down part-time jobs while in high school.
We did encourage teen summer jobs, although we were more successful making this happen with one kid and not the other. COVID didn’t help. 😬
The goal, of course, is to transition away from allowance and into work. I encourage you to listen to my conversations with Lay and Owen to help you figure out what path (and timing) will work best for your family. That is, after all, what the art of allowance is all about.
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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