Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Money Mammals Challenge

Fellow Money Mammals,

April is now my favorite month. Why? Well, it's National Financial Literacy Month of course. It's a great opportunity to spread the word about youth financial literacy. I'll be doing a live Money Mammals event in Eureka, California, later this week sponsored by the Consumer Credit Counseling Services up there. Then I'll be heading to DC to for Financial Literacy Day on Capitol Hill with the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy to help spread the good word.

But I wanted to do more. I thought long and hard about how to make this month more relevant to all of us and our kids and I think I may have come up with a compelling idea...

The Money Mammals Challenge. And we want you to take the challenge with us.

It's simple. You and your children each set financial goals to achieve this April 2008. Download this super-simple worksheet here and put pictures of you, your little savers and, most important, pictures of the goals you will be trying to achieve. They need to see the goals. Also, make sure you're saving money in a jar or something so that they can see your money being saved as well as theirs. As the sheet suggests, break the goal into four parts and enter those incremental amounts into the weekly rows. I've tried the goal-saving approach with some success (see my previous blog posts) and I think it can work for you.

Let us know how you're doing by adding comments to this post. The second step in the challenge will be to spread the word. More on that later.

-John

1 comment:

Welcome to my world! said...

This is such a great idea! I am going to challenge myself to cook at home to save against those expensive dinners out, which are such a waste of money!