Justine Tobin’s KidsMoney Weblog

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

Yesterday we talked about folks who write about kids and money and how they are, in general, teaching the values of responsibility and frugality. Yeah, I suppose it goes with the territory. But later in the article that I cited yesterday (1) one of the Yoders’ readers wrote the following:

“Tightwad dads have few attendees at their funerals. Yes, teaching our kids the value of money through self-reliance and discipline is important, very important. So are generosity and random acts of kindness.”

Generosity and random acts of kindness certainly are important values to teach our kids. And I think they are best taught through example. We can all remember times when someone cut us a break. I remember when my father approached me in the autumn of my sophomore year in college and suggested that I should buy a car. I was stunned when he told me that he knew that a dealership was having a big clearance and that he would help me by buying half of the car himself and lending me the money for the other half, interest free, and that I wouldn’t have to pay the note back until I graduated from college and started working.

I know my dad was teaching me a lot by proposing this business deal. But I mostly saw it as my tightwad dad cutting me a huge amount of slack and helping me out. This act on his part has always stuck with me.

So I try to exhibit these same characteristics of generosity and random acts of kindness with my kids, especially through lessons on money. And knowing that these values are being delivered  can make you, as a parent, feel better about breaking your rules from time to time and helping your kids out.

And rules are made to broken, right?

Justine

1) Yoder, Stephen Kreider and Isaac S.; \”Readers\’ Turn: Clunkers, Job Loss and More\”; Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2008

You folks know that two of my favorite writers on kids and money are Stephen Yoder and his son, Isaac, at the Wall Street Journal. These two guys, father and son, share a column and write from their different perspectives on teaching kids about money. They don’t get as deep as we do here, mostly because they only write the column about once a week. We post every business day, so we cover a lot more material here.

But Stephen and Isaac have a large readership, some of which comes and reads us here, as well.

In a recent column of theirs, a reader noted that Stephen and Isaac preach “frugality and responsibility.” This reader also commented that she and her husband “are trying as parents to avoid the sense of entitlement, preaching industry and hard work, and attempting to lead by example.”1

I liked what that parent had to say in the Yoder’s column on December 21. I hadn’t really thought about that fact that anyone who is writing about teaching kids about money is probably preaching “frugality and responsibility.” I suppose that is what we are doing here at KidsMoney. I certainly don’t think that someone who is writing a column or a blog on money and kids is likely to teach lavishness and irresponsibility, right?

Although, for certain, there are many parents who do not intentionally teach their children about money. And they may indeed be teaching lavishness and irresponsibility by the example they set in their homes. We’ve heard plenty of stories of folks who supposedly had achieved the American Dream of many things, but had done it in a fashion that had not used the values of frugality and responsibility, but rather through excessive debt and overspending.

Here’s to the concepts of frugality and responsibility – ones that might be good to teach our kids and ones that might be back in fashion again.

Justine

1) Yoder, Stephen Kreider and Isaac S.; “Readers’ Turn: Clunkers, Job Loss and More”; Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2008

People’s heads are swimming. We are dealing with a surreal economic and financial environment. I am intrigued with how people are dealing with it.

I’ve had people tell me that their heads are ‘swimming’ with all of the chaos they have to deal with. I’ve been talking with presidents of companies whose financing will soon expire and the companies are scrambling to figure out to survive. I’ve talked to men and women who say that if one of the breadwinners of the household lose their job, it will be ‘all over.’ I’ve talked with people who are in tears about making only $3.5mm this year instead of $4.5mm. I’ve talked with people who don’t have enough food in the house to feed the children.

Through it all, I go home and I talk to my kids. I let them know that I have done my absolute best in trying to parent them and to provide for them. I speak to them very openly about the very different ways in which everyone is dealing with the change in our economy and in the financial markets. I tell them that I may not be able to do everything, financially, that I had once hoped to do for them. But that, even so, we will be OK and that this is a great learning opportunity.

I said this to Jon recently. Jon said, “Well, all I really need is a bed, food, school and friends.” I reminded him that he goes to school with children who do not have a pillow to sleep on. He said he knew that. He said he was glad to have a pillow and a bed.

And I thought, “Me, too.”

Justine