Legos Meet Social Media: How to Share Your Creations with the World

Legos are unquestionably one of the greatest, most imaginative toys ever invented.

Sure, the increasingly intricate pre-packaged sets are cool (I guess). But, the real magic emerges from the inevitable rubble of mixed-up pieces. There’s nothing quite like seeing a kid rummage through a random collection of lego bricks for hours on end to assemble a unique creation straight from their own imagination.

That basic magic hasn’t changed since my brother and I were assembling our own creations back in the 60s and 70s.

One thing that has definitely changed though: the way kids share their creations with others. It used to be that your audience was confined to a handful of admiring parents and siblings. Easy access to the Internet and social media technologies have completely changed that game. Now kids routinely share their creations with thousands of other kids across the globe. It’s truly inspiring to watch kids proudly post their unique creations and riff on each other’s designs — one big global, collaborative, iterative refinement process.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, our 8 year old stumbled upon some Lego designs for little mock soda vending machines on Youtube. Since then, he’s been busily cranking out his own variations on the little machines. This weekend, he asked me if I could help him post his favorite design modification for the world to see. You bet!

We had a grand time. The perfect father-son project!

A Flip camera, Screenflow for the Mac, Garage Band, Youtube and a couple hours later, here it is:

No doubt, the world would be a much better place if every kid had the opportunity to play with Legos!

Intrinsic Chore Drive, Suze Snippet, Credit Cards for 7 Year Olds: Weekly Family Finance Picks (#32)

We’re constantly scouring the Internet looking for articles related to family finances and teaching kids good personal finance habits. You can visit the FamZoo delicious page to see our ever growing list of family finance bookmarks. We’re up to 943 now! Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous week and post them here.

The picks for this week are:

Bribery or Intrinsic Motivation: Which Drives YOU?

by Christine Carter, PhD on The Huffington Post

Ever struggle to get your kids to do chores, homework, etc? Apparently, it’s all about harnessing your child’s “intrinsic motivation”.

Thanks to Dan Pink’s Drive, there’s a lot of discussion about intrinsic drive (self motivation) vs. extrinsic rewards (bribes) these days. Christine gives a quick rundown on the topic and in relation to getting your kids to complete chores, homework, and all those other tasks they typically hate to do.

Ahh, the Holy Grail of parenting! Tell me more!

It seems to me (and, remember, I’m just a Geek Dad-of-5, not a psychologist, sociologist, or whatever-ist), most kids struggle to appreciate the long term implications and value of certain habits that we as adults deem to be in their best interest (based on our own valid hindsight/experience). Makes sense to me: they’re kids. Their frontal lobes are still developing and they’re just starting to rack up life’s experiences. Therefore, tapping into their intrinsic motivation in these types of areas seems like an improbable if not herculean task.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree that intrinsic motivation is the most powerful form of motivation. I just can’t imagine a functional world without extrinsic forms of motivation as well — seems like practical scenarios require a balance of the two.

Nonetheless, Christine boldly asserts: “Next week I’ll be writing about how to harness kids’ intrinsic motivation to help them get their chores and their homework done — without complaints or nagging. Really.”

I may be skeptical, but I’ll be tuning in for sure!

Fiscal Prudence 101

by Suze Orman on The Costco Connection

My mother-in-law stumbled across this article while shopping at Costco. It’s about preparing teens for the real financial world, and it’s advice from famous personal finance guru, Suze Orman. I like her laser focus on just two key lessons: how credit cards really work and the value of saving money. See her short and sweet teaching tips for parents here.

Give Your Kid Some Credit

by Robyn Gearey on The Motley Fool

Robyn’s article caught my eye because she’s mapped out a very thoughtful, staged gameplan for teaching her 7 year old daughter about personal finance. I liked the emphasis on learning to spend within a budget and the realistic attitude towards introducing her child to credit cards.

The immediate jump from a piggy bank to a real online bank account and Mint.com might prove to be a bit abstract and inflexible for her daughter. (Insert FamZoo plug here ;-) But, I whole-heartedly applaud the thoughtful, explicit planning.

Check out Robyn’s gameplan here.

Bonus video: here’s a wonderfully clever and engaging animated adaptation of a brief talk by Dan Pink on motivation.

Two key things to note from the video when thinking about our first pick-of-the-week entry:

• “Money is an effective motivator for simple straightforward tasks” (sounds like most chores to me!)
• “If you don’t pay enough, people won’t be motivated.”

When Do Most Parents Pay Allowance to Their Kids?

I was reading a post recently by a father of a 9 year old. As the kid was angling for a trip to the Five Below store to blow his monthly allowance, the dad was wondering aloud whether there was a correlation between sales spikes in discount stores and allowance pay days for kids.

This got me wondering too. When do most parents dole out allowance?

I took a quick (anonymous¹) look at our real-life data, and here are the stats for FamZoo families:

• Almost 80% of FamZoo allowances are delivered weekly while around 20% are delivered monthly. Just over 1% are annual (typical of, say, a clothing allowance).
• The most popular day to deliver allowance is Sunday. After that, it’s pretty evenly distributed with Monday, Friday, and Saturday getting the slight edge over Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

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¹To protect privacy, we only disclose anonymous aggregate statistics from the FamZoo database.

Chore Pockets, Dividend Allowances, and Summer Jobs in Winter: Weekly Family Finance Picks (#31)

We’re constantly scouring the Internet looking for articles related to family finances and teaching kids good personal finance habits. You can visit the FamZoo delicious page to see our ever growing list of family finance bookmarks. We’re up to 911 now! Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous week and post them here.

This week, we’ve got chore pockets, dividend allowances, and summer jobs (already??):

Resolutionize: Chores vs. Allowance

by Nikki on Coupon Cookin’

Nikki’s following up on her New Year’s resolutions by rolling out a new chore system for her young children. She’s come up with a pocket-based chore chart that I thought was really clever and unique. If you’re looking for a hands-on physical chore chart for your youngsters, check it out.

By the way, there’s no reason you can’t use a physical chore chart with a virtual bank. Just credit the appropriate virtual account(s) at the end of the week instead of doling out cash.

Paying Allowances From Dividend Stocks

by Don on Money Reasons

Here’s another novel idea that I’d never heard of before: funding your child’s allowance from dividend stocks. Read Don’s short post to see how it works. I like how the approach combines an allowance with a natural incentive for your child to learn about investing (or at least, at minimum, understand what a dividend is).

Don laments that he’s waited too long to use the approach with his kids, but I disagree. If you’re starting late, just combine an initially meager dividend allowance with a regular allowance. That way, your child’s “base salary” comes directly from you and a “variable comp” component comes from an incrementally growing dividend stream over the years.

8 Ways for Kids to Find a Summer Job

by Dan Kadlec on CBS MoneyWatch: Bank of Dad

It seems a bit nuts to be talking about nailing down teen summer jobs in the dead of winter, but Dan makes a good case for getting started (really) early and provides 8 job hunting tips for your teens.

In fact, if you follow up on his suggestion to search the US Government job database for student summer gigs, you’ll see that the closing dates are very near — late January to mid February. So, get hoppin’.

Chores Sorta Done, Collegiate Money Skills, Allowance 101: Weekly Family Finance Picks (#30)

Title: Weekly Family Finance Picks (#30)

We’re constantly scouring the Internet looking for articles related to family finances and teaching kids good personal finance habits. You can visit the FamZoo delicious page to see our ever growing list of family finance bookmarks. We’re up to 883 now! Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous week and post them here.

Up for this week: when chores sorta get done, how money skills make for successful college kids, and Allowance 101.

When “Sorta” Means “Totally”...

by Melisa on Suburban Scrawl

Having experienced (there’s probably a better verb!) the teenage years with our kids 4 times now (that’s one of mine at right), I couldn’t pass this one up. How many times have you had this kind of result with your teenager regarding a chore? Gotta love’m...

Top 6 Ways Money Skills Give College Students an Edge

by Dan Kadlec on CBS MoneyWatch: Bank of Dad

According to the study cited in Dan’s column, solid money habits in college students correlate to less depression, higher esteem, better grades, and higher financial/academic/life satisfaction. Sounds like the new wonder drug! Good thing you’re starting early with your kids...

Economics 101: The Pros & Cons of Paying Your Kids an Allowance

by Grandma Maria on Creative Play Plus

If you’re just starting to think about allowances for your kids, Maria dishes up a quick, helpful rundown on the pros, cons, and alternatives. She tops it off with a book recommendation as well.

Make New Year's Resolutions With Your Kids on FamZoo

OC Mom, Shelby Barone, recommends that parents start the new year by making resolutions with their kids. I like Shelby’s approach, and it’s something we’ve done with our kids over the years.

After discussing resolutions as a family, Shelby recommends writing them down in a special place. In our case, that “special place” has been (surprise!) FamZoo. We use FamZoo’s shared family Checklists.

Here’s the quick How and Why: Each family member makes their own list and shares it with the rest of the family. For a given resolution, you can set a specific due date (or a repeating due date like every month). Or, you can just enter descriptions and leave due dates off — whatever makes the most sense and feels most comfortable. You can even set up text message reminders if you need a nudge. This all helps with Shelby’s recommendation to be sure you follow-up on resolutions.

Saving them all online makes for an amusing family record over the years, too. I just looked at our 2008 resolutions and got a good chuckle out of my son’s vow to “Get a 6-pack (of abs)” — which he surely did, eventually...

Wanna try it with your family? Here are the step by step instructions for setting up and sharing New Year’s resolution lists with your family in FamZoo (you can view as a full-sized slide show in a separate window here):

1. Sign in and click the Create List link.
   
2. Fill in the list name, sharing setting, etc.
   
3. Click the Add Item link to start adding resolutions.
   
4. Enter the description for each resolution.
   
5. Keep clicking the Add Item link to add more resolutions.
   
6. Move your mouse over a resolution to edit or delete it.
   
7. Set specific dates and reminders if desired.
   
8. Check out any resolution lists that are shared with you.
   
9. Review the current list, move to another list, or create a new list on the Checklist tab.
   

Happy New Year and good luck with those resolutions!

P.S. The good news is: once you’ve entered them for this year, you can just recycle them for next year, and the next... That’s what I do ;-)

Extinction Bursts, Patience, Tiara Tips: Weekly Family Finance Picks (#29)

We’re constantly scouring the Internet looking for articles related to family finances and teaching kids good personal finance habits. You can visit the FamZoo delicious page to see our ever growing list of family finance bookmarks. We’re up to 857 now! Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous week and post them here.

I have to confess that I skipped last week to relax a bit during the holidays. Slacker, I know! But, I’m back in the saddle with the top picks from the last two weeks along with a bonus video:

Resolve to Weather the Extinction Burst

by Benjamin Garber on The Nashua Telegraph

Do you find yourself giving in to your child’s whining, crying, or (annoyingly clever) negotiations? Maybe when you’re fielding impulsive purchase requests at the check-out stand or dealing with a refusal to do chores?

Perhaps this article will help you hold your ground. At minimum, you'll add a cool new phrase to your vocabulary — the “extinction burst”. Read about it here.

Slow and Steady Saving Still Pays

by Tom Lauricella on The Wall Street Journal Family Finances

Tom walks through a good lesson to pass along to your kids: patience is still a virtue when investing (among other things!). I like the nice clear graphic. See it here.

Parenting Secrets From Behind The Tiara

by Melisa With One S on The Suburban Scrawl

Melisa dishes up some really excellent parenting messages here. They’re broadly applicable but have specific relevance to kids finance matters as well. I love the consistency, teamwork, and long-term-thinking themes along with the acknowledgement that parenting is hard, hard work. Witty writing, too.

And, for those who have resolved to get started on teaching your kids about personal finance in 2011, here’s a bonus video with some good, practical tips courtesy of Deb Domke from New Horizons Credit Union:

Teaching kids to save Money: fox10tv.com