Networking Without Talking About Yourself (Beta)
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?_r=2
Justine Tobin’s KidsMoney Weblog – Parents Teaching Kids About Money Justinetobin.com
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself. - Maya Angelou
Challenge- to not talk about yourself the next time you network.
Come on in. Take a look around.
July 6, 2011
So you are at this blog for some reason. I am not going to guess why. There are many reasons parents, and kids, and others come to visit this blog. But I do know that when you first look around, you might think some of the entries are dated. Well, they are.
But that doesn’t mean they are irrelevant. Lessons for kids regarding money are timeless. Sure, economies change. The size of your savings account changes. And your kids grow up – and change. But the lessons don’t change much.
So come on in. Look around. Use the masthead to your right to look for topics that will be helpful to you in teaching your kids about money. Follow timelines of stories. See the progress. And how our experiences can help you.
We have a lot going on in our family. Lots of recent money lessons learned. And given.
I will try to get some more stories up shortly.
Justine
Do your kids know how much your healthcare costs?
December 15, 2010
“I sat in on a group of teens to discuss healthcare a few months back. We watched Michael Moore’s movie, Sicko and then had a open discussion. These kids were all amazed at how folks that HAVE insurance are screwed by health insurance conglomerates (sp)!! They are didn’t know alot about the healthcare (coverage or lack thereof) in their own homes. They were very interested in the cost for them to be cover by their parents, if their family had insurance. The kids that were getting to the age where they would have to get their own coverage were very worried, if they could afford it and if the insurance companies would disqualify them (b/c nowadays this happens OFTEN)! I think that students should be exposed to the conversation/dialogue just so that they are aware b/c in the long run, it will affect them as individuals and as folks that end up caring for the boomers and us X’ers.”
OK, I don’t know where I got this quote. And I apologize for that. I found it way down in my pile of things to do for this blog. If it is yours, please let me know.
But, yeah. Do your kids know how much your healthcare costs? Do you have health insurance? Do they know that you do or don’t? Do they know what it costs you to go to the doctor each time? Do they know what it costs your insurance company each time you go to the doctor? DO YOU?
This is a great discussion to have with your kids. And a great thing to teach them. Especially in light of the discussions we have been having in this country over the past year. It’s important to prepare our kids for adulthood by teaching them about the cost of healthcare. And to help them get smart so that they, as a generation, can find new, innovative solutions for our country.
Justine
My Friend, Sue, Adds Some Insight on Credit Cards….
December 13, 2010
My friend, Sue, wrote me an email long ago about a post I made. I am finally sharing it with you. Very helpful information…..
“Just read your blog post and really appreciated it. I have made so many financial mistakes in my 32 (almost 33) years, that it is ridiculous. I think its fantastic that you are teaching your kids, explaining to them and also letting them live with their mistakes so that they can learn when they can’t do too much damage!
“When you mentioned that Hannah is going to close her credit card before she goes to France it reminded me of a couple of mistakes that I made and thought I would share. One thought is that I believe it is important to your long term credit to build up as much history as possible and wonder if it would be more beneficial to keep the card open but leave it in the US?
“Two other lessons I learned back in the day: (1) If there is a balance on the card when you close it, it is a negative ding on your score – minor, but still a ding. (2) I was diligently paying down my credit card balances and I would call the credit card company every time I had paid down another $500, $1000 (or whatever chunk) and ask them to lower my credit limit. I thought I was being responsible, but what I was doing was keeping my debt to available credit at 98%. Not good!
“Keep the blog coming!”
Sue
Uh Oh. The Bank Called and Left a Message.
December 10, 2010
I came home from work recently and there was a message on the phone from the bank. I will call this bank, which is a GREAT bank, the Friendly Bank. Friendly Bank’s COLLECTIONS DEPARTMENT left a message on our voice mail. I immediately called my husband, since he manages the family’s finances.
Wonderful husband called the bank and went online to check the accounts. And he figured out that it was a problem with our daughter’s checking account. But because he is not on the account, he couldn’t get to the bottom of it. And good thing, since that is clearly my daughter’s responsibility.
I spoke to my daughter when she got home and told her there was a problem with the bank and she needed to call and find out what was going on. You all know that this is one of the greatest benefits of teaching kids to manage their money – they also learn to make phone calls and interact with customer service representatives which is not always an easy or comfortable process. I think that this is an important skill to teach our kids before they leave our homes and move on to adulthood.
My daughter called and found out that she had bounced a check. The Friendly Bank paid the check for her anyway, because of our family’s solid relationship with this smaller, local bank. But she needed to make the bank whole and she also needed to pay the charge of $25 which the bank charged for the service.
The first question my daughter and I asked each other was, “How did you bounce a check?” We both are to blame. I realize that I have NOT trained my daughter well in matters related to checking accounts. And she has not taken all of the responsibility she should in managing her account.
You, dear readers, will benefit from this lesson over the next few blog posts. We will get into checking accounts and how to teach them to your kids. It’s one of the later lessons in teaching your kids about personal finance.
More to come.
Justine
Kids Get Older and Lessons Change.
December 6, 2010
As parents, we know that our kids grow up very quickly. They are slipping out of our hands like little grains of sand.
And because of that, we need to get our lessons completed in a finite amount of time. We, as parents, are required to teach our children all kind of matters about money before our children march out of the house to be responsible adults who will contribute to our vast world.
My three kids are a senior in high school, a freshman in high school and a seventh-grader, respectively. And because of that, the lessons that I am teaching them have evolved. But still, they are different for each child.
For Hannah, my senior in high school, who will leave my house in a mere nine months, the lessons are about putting the finishing touches on all that I have taught her. And they are about sitting on the sidelines and just being a coach and an advisor. There is little you can teach a senior in high school. They are done listening. They are on that bridge to adulthood and leaving their parents behind.
For Jon, my freshman in high school, we are really moving into ‘big people personal finance.’ He has mastered his credit card. It’s time to start learning about checking accounts and really earning money and saving for college.
For Max, my seventh grader, it’s about finishing off some of the money lessons of childhood and trying to transition him to the idea of credit cards and really earning money and having all of these lessons start jelling in his head.
As parents, we must be flexible and creative and progressive in how we teach our children about money. We need to be cognizant of each of their ages and places in childhood and how much time has passed and how much time we have remaining in their childhoods as we administer our lessons.
Justine
Whiny Rich and Working Poor
December 4, 2010
Over the past few days I have encountered all kinds of people in all kinds of financial situations. I have socialized with very wealthy people who have fretted over the long lines in the grocery store and the inconvenience of waiting in the car pool line at their kids’ private school. Wealthy folks who have stressed at needing to achieve *perfection* during the holiday season.
And I have encountered men who were so grateful to have some work on a Saturday morning that they seemed like young, energetic dogs, prancing around on their front legs, waiting for their next instructions.
I see all of these people and I realize, remind myself, that these people are each a priceless, loving human being.
And I then remember to teach this to my children. Over and over.
I teach my children that one’s financial position does not determine their worth. Although in this country, it seems that that is certainly the case much of the time. I teach my children that the working poor and the homeless did not intentionally get themselves there, typically, but they often have issues or problems that got them there. And I expose my children to folks like this on a regular basis so that they can learn this for themselves.
I teach my children that the wealthy also did not intentionally get themselves there, typically. Many of the wealthy our family knows have inherited their money or they just fell into exceptionally high-paying jobs. Yes, they worked hard. But not any harder than the moving guys who are grateful to have the work.
I also teach my children that they, particularly because they are Americans, have the opportunity to be any of these people, the Whiny Rich or the Working Poor, and could very easily. My children’s financial situation in the future will result from luck and hard work, but will also be shaped by the effects of structural violence and bigotry and economic cycles and how risks that they take play out.
Which is why they need to learn all about money. So that they can manage well whatever they earn or achieve.
Justine
Heh. You think I have really responsible kids?
December 2, 2010
All kids are different. Don’t all parents know that? It’s actually incredible to see how different your kids can be from one other.
I have two boys, thirty months apart in age, who nearly look like twins. It’s funny. But they couldn’t be more different.
Jon, my elder son, has a credit card and a mobile phone and manages both of them pretty well. This month, at least, he is a straight A student. He is affable and sweet and compassionate and generous. He has a wide worldly view and his empathy can be astounding.
And then there is Max. Max is my younger son. He is sweet and charming and devious and cunning and brilliant and a very good liar. As his mother, I love all those things about him. I have to.
But Max is also pretty immature for his age of twelve and a half years old. In my opinion, relative to my other kids and kids his age.
I tell you this because Max just isn’t on the same learning track as my other two kids when it comes to money. We’ve already learned a lot about Max. We gave him a mobile phone when he entered the sixth grade, in middle school, as we had done with our two older children. But Max never used the phone and it just sat in his room. So we just let it fall away. Based on that, we haven’t helped Max get a credit card. He just doesn’t seem interested, and frankly, I think he is going to be more of a challenge with a credit card than my other two kids.
In fact, now that I think about it, our son, Max, owes his dad about $400 in charges from iTunes that he made with his iTunes account. We’ve shut that account down and are dealing with this latest issue.
Just because I write a blog about Parents Teaching Kids About Money doesn’t mean I have all the answers. Or that my kids are all great at this. But hopefully, that makes me a more credible and authentic teacher and counselor to you, my readers.
Justine
You all know that this is a blog where I chronicle my adventures in teaching my kids about money. I started out writing about things I understood well. But now, as I learn, I write about my adventures to help others learn even more.
Hannah, my daughter, is moving to France in a few days. She will be living there for a year, without returning home. Hannah has a few prescription medications that she takes so she needs to stock up on those to take with her to France.
Hannah took her prescriptions to get them filled at the local grocery store, which is where our family normally fills its prescriptions. Hannah soon learned that the medicines were going to be very expensive. The prescriptions are very expensive because our family recently moved to a health care savings plan, which allows our family to significantly reduce our health-care premiums but as a result, we pay for more of our health care expenses out of our own pocket. So Hannah’s prescription is now very expensive.
Hannah, being the self-sufficient teenager that she is, took the prescription to the first pharmacy herself. The pharmacy called her soon after and told her that the price of the prescriptions medicines would be fairly high. I love that the pharmacy didn’t call me. They called HER. Hannah came to me and asked what she should do. Hannah has such great familiarity with money and budgets now that she also knows that one hundred or two hundred dollars is a lot of money to spend on a prescription.
Our answer to Hannah was that we would pay for the prescription, since doing so under our smaller premium plan was still cheaper than the prices, in total, under our old health plan. But we told her she had to shop around.
We gave Hannah some guidance. We told her to call the likely suspects: Target, Walmart, Costco. And Hannah did just that.
Hannah learned that our local grocery store would be the cheapest on one prescription but that Costco would be the cheapest on the other two prescriptions. She came and gave us that information. And then she followed through. She called the grocery story pharmacy and asked the pharmacist to fill one prescription but not the other two. Hannah picked up the unfilled prescriptions and, with the help of her dad, took them to Costco and got them filled.
Hannah found the lowest cost prescriptions and saved our family some money. She learned to shop around and find the cheapest price on exactly the same product. And she learned more about how crazy our health care insurance system is here in the United States.
I am very proud of her.
Justine
Jon thinks that managing money is no fun.
August 14, 2009
Jon’s credit card statement came today. Jon is out of town on a camping trip. Hannah opened the statement, thinking it was hers. But she discovered it was Jon’s.
I looked at the statement. There is a late charge. My heart sank. My thirteen-year-old son just doesn’t use his credit card enough to want to deal with a $29 late charge.
Yes, the rules are changing come January. Maybe there won’t be these outrageous charges for being late with credit cards starting then. Frankly, I can’t remember.
But that’s not the point.
Jon called me just now and I told him about the charges. He was clearly upset.
He said, “How much is that per day?”
I noted that a late fee is charged to your account if the payment is just one day late. It’s just a lump sum. Jon thought that there would be some kind of penalty per day. He thought it was unfair that his payment was four days late and he has to pay $29 in an assessment for being ‘late.’
I agree. My heart goes out to this child of mine, this child who is so frugal, who watches every single penny. I want to rush up to his room and stuff $29 into his piggy bank so that he won’t feel the pain. I truly want to pay the charges for him.
But I hold back.
It can be so painful to be a responsible parent. Parenting these days in this country seems to be about helping our kids not have pain or disappointment. But that is not parenting. That is coddling.
I am a parent.
When Jon called, I told him how this works. I told him that it is important to pay all bills on time. That now he only has a credit card. But when he grows up, he will have the rent, the utility bill, the mortgage. All of those bills have to be paid on time, even if there are no steep financial penalties for not paying the bill on time.
And that is why Jon has a credit card. To learn to manage money in preparation for adulthood.
Even if it is no fun.
Justine
