Around the World

I recently had lunch with a friend just before she was about to take off on an around-the-world journey. I was envious. We had talked previously about goals, something she knew I believed was important. But, more importantly, goals were something her Dad believed in. She put it simply, "It may seem cheezy, but this 'goal' thing works." I found it interesting that she had to include the "cheezy" disclaimer to me, a reader and listener of those same books, as if to say, "you know, I'm not some crazy, self-helf zealot."

That encounter made me realize two things:

First, having goals and putting them out there for the world to hear (I'm thinking of Gary Vaynerchuk's claim that he WILL buy the NY Jets) is a something that I believe can work for anyone and that more of us should embrace (I'm telling myself to be more vocal as I write). None of us should ever feel they need to defend our desires to strive for difficult goals with a line like, "I know it sounds cheezy, but..."

Second, we parents need to model goal-setting for our kids to really make it stick. This is important because modeling is how kids learn. They "do what we do, not what we say" (unless of course we do what we say). As I've noted in this blog many times, goal-setting for kids is a path to learning to save.

So put your goals out there for all to see. Have your kids to the same.

See where that takes you.

Around the world, maybe?

Back to American Girl

In keeping with my belief that the point of an allowance is to allow kids to make mistakes and learn from them, I said yes to my daughter's request to save for an American Girl doll. She's set her goal and pasted the exact doll she wants on her Save jar. Big bonus - she immediately shifted all of her money from the Spend Smart jar into Save, once again proving that an "owned" goal is just as powerful for 6-year-olds as they are for grown adults.

My hope in this experiment is that she'll earn at least a trickle of appreciation for how expensive the dolls are when she is finally able to purchase one in about two-and-a-half months. It will be interesting. I'll keep you posted.

-John

Just Add Kids

We are really fortunate. Our Money Mammals teaching guide, for kids 1-2, just won the Oregon State Desjardins award for leadership in youth financial literacy, courtesy of Rogue Federal Credit Union and Kerrie Davis. Thanks, Kerrie! I also happened to be using the teaching guide this week in my daughter's K-2 class at Larchmont Charter Schools here in Los Angeles, California. The guide provided a nice framework for a "Share" (charitable giving) lesson tied to the school's Thanksgiving food (and money) drive. I brought in some jars and the kids decorated them with fun Share labels and Goal labels for the amount they planned to save over the two weeks until the Thanksgiving drive ended. I enhanced the lesson with video from my show.

The kids really enjoyed setting the goals and I just know that they will do an incredible job bringing in food and money for the needy. The take-home lesson for me was that, once again, you just need a good framework and just add kids. The kids are ready to learn about many aspects of financial literacy at a young age (five and six in this case) and they make any lesson so much more than you could have imagined prior to going into the classroom.

A Christmas Gift

So what was my daughter's favorite present this Christmas? Her own.

Quick back story - As mentioned in a previous post, we recently tried the saving-for-a-goal approach to dealing with allowance. My daughter taped a picture of something she wanted to buy - a neat, kid-sized pottery wheel that came with wood, clay and paint. Over the course of a few months, she saved enough to purchase the wheel. Having the picture taped directly to her save bank helped serve as a reminder at allowance time. Sure enough, most of her money went to saving. When she saved enough for the item, she gave me her money and I purchased it online for her. I would have preferred to purchase this item at a store so she could physically pay for the item, but then this wouldn't have happened...

Back to Christmas - She had already opened most of her gifts as I picked up the brown box that had arrived with her name on it (one of several). It had been a busy holiday season and I had forgotten about the order we had placed for her. I thought this was another gift from one of her long distance relatives. We opened the box together and when I realized what was inside, I almost jumped with excitement. My daughter, though, went bananas. She was so excited and proud that she had received the toy for which she had so diligently saved. It was a an exciting moment for both my wife and me. Of all the presents she had received, none had elicited such a powerful reaction. We had stumbled into an incredible teaching moment for our child. She had learned the power and pride of saving for something on your own. She had received an incredible Christmas gift...from herself.

I wish you all a Happy New Year!