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 997 now! Each week, we pick our favorite articles from the previous week and post them here.
Two picks and one “anti-pick” this week. Let’s start with the anti-pick:
Suze Orman's Four Top Financial Lessons to Teach Your Kids
Just two weeks ago, Suze Orman made our top family finance picks list with her Fiscal Prudence 101 advice for teens. Well, she’s baaa-aaack, but in a different way. Let’s just call this an “anti-pick”. I’m finding her top 4 financial lessons for kids to be a bit austere. Nuke the Tooth Fairy? Really? Lighten up. Her advice got some readers pretty fired up. It’s not all bad, but I found her top 4 choices of financial lessons for kids to be curious at best. Read Aaron's interview and the reader comments here. See what you think.
Chore Dice
Time to clean the toilet? Let’s roll for it!
I just stumbled on Delia’s creative, fun idea for assigning those unpleasant little family tasks: chore dice. Read about how to make the dice and use them here.
I really like Delia’s site. It’s full of simple, family-oriented arts & crafts projects. A few are family finance oriented, like this nickel chore system.
Students Save With Pocket Change
This strikes me as a cool model for introducing kids to banking and savings concepts: parents volunteer as tellers at your local school in partnership with a local bank. The parent tellers help kids open up a real savings account — $5 minimum plus a $5 initial matching in this case. On designated “Bank Days”, kids bring in their savings to make deposits with the parent tellers. Read more about the approach here.
Sadly, the original program was discontinued when Washington Mutual failed — there’s a lesson in there somewhere! Happily, the schools in Issaquah found a new banking partner (Washington Federal), and the program is back up and running at 4 local elementary schools. Washington Federal describes their program here.
Of course, it’s always a little dicey when businesses get intertwined with education. As long as it’s managed carefully though, this seems like an effective, tangible way for kids to learn and practice good saving habits.
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