Smart Money Kids Adventure (Part 1)

  So a few weeks ago, I got quite the email from Dave Ramsey’s daughter – Rachel Cruze – asking me to join in the book launch team for their new book coming out on April 22nd. I was beyond excited to join this team of bloggers and speakers and influential people. Maybe some of their greatness will rub off on little ol’ blog-from-her-pj’s me! We got an advanced copy of the book, Smart Money, Smart Kids – one of the fun perks of this group – and I can’t tell you how much it has helped us in the last few weeks pinpoint areas where we as parents need to step up the money teaching for our girls. We’ve been very intentional about so many of our parenting decisions. But teaching our kids about money has been put on the back burner – we feel we’re doing pretty good with our money; we were sorta assuming what we did would soak into their minds without much effort. After reading Dave Ramsey’s book though, we’ve realized that this is another area where some intentionality is not only helpful, but necessary.

We’ve never done chore charts or assigned jobs in our home – well, I guess I shouldn’t say “never” – we tried a few times, but it was too overwhelming for me to keep up with the stickers and prizes and dimes and pennies. i just consciously involved them in many normal activities of the day as their emotions and abilities could handle. But now that the girls are 5 and 7, though, they can keep up with charts and reward systems themselves. So we’ve designed a great plan – based on ideas in the book – for giving them “commissions” instead of “allowances” – basically, we hire our kids. They aren’t required to work for us. but when they do, they are definitely rewarded. (I’ll have more on their specific job assignments in part 2 of this series.)

 

Our kids have seen the true reality of life and death in a very real way.  They’ve seen how people have given so generously to Kyle’s Memorial Fund, to our family – sometimes keeping us afloat financially while we were sinking emotionally and physically. They want to give back. We don’t teach our kids that money is evil – but rather it can be good because of all the good it can do! So, in order to give, they have to earn. And they’ve been working SO HARD! I’m so proud of them!! If you think this is something you could use in your lives too, go check it out. (Psst – you can download the first two chapters for free – just scroll to the bottom of the page!)

  Come back for Part 2 – where I’ll share our job charts, our payment system, and how we’re all holding up two weeks in.