Starting Early Is Very Important

Good morning. In the first newsletter for my DVD, "The Money Mammals: Saving Money Is Fun," I included some valuable information from the National PTA that I thought bared repeating in my blog. Teaching your kids about money early is advocated by credit unions, banks, money experts and the National PTA. Below is what the latter has to say.

Get started now:

1. As soon as children can count, introduce them to money. Take an active role in providing them with information. Observation and repetition are two important ways children learn.

2. Communicate with children as they grow about your values concerning money --- how to save it, how to make it grow, and most importantly, how to spend it wisely.

3. Help children learn the differences between needs, wants, and wishes. This will prepare them for making good spending decisions in the future.

-Brought to you by National PTA® by Paul Richard (from FamilyEducation.com)


Let me know what's working for you to help teach your kids about money.

-John

MINUS 18%?!

A relatively recent article in The Wall Street Journal (8/7/06) noted that the savings rate for people under 42 in the US was NEGATIVE 18%. My eyes almost popped out of my head! I think I reread that stat about twenty times to make sure I wasn't missing something. I wasn't. How could this have happened? And what can we do about it? As you might suspect, my first thought is that we need to start building good money behaviors early. I thought this was an interesting first blog post because it was such a revealing stat. Granted, a percentage of this debt is due to student loans, but there's no getting around the fact that Americans seem to be ignoring one of the tried-and-true axioms to attain financial independence - don't live ABOVE your means. So how do we help our kids? By starting the money conversation with them early. We must be comfortable talking with our kids about money so that it's not a mystery. That's why we are running community outreach events with The Money Mammals - to help parents begin a dialogue with their kids. We know from surveys that parents want and need help and we will work with schools, banks, libraries, community centers and more to assist parents in their efforts to help them raise kids with good money sense.