30 Ways To Make Sure Your Kid Is No Money Fool

April 1^st is April Fools Day. Duh. No kidding.

April 1^st is also the first day of Financial Literacy Month.

That makes April 1^st the perfect day to start thinking about how you can make sure your kid doesn’t grow up to be a fool with money.

Not sure what to cover? Here are 30 wise money conversations to share with your child — one for each day of Financial Literacy Month.

April 2016 — Financial Literacy Month
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
					1 Tell Your Kids This Saving Story With A Surprise Ending When it comes to building wealth, sometimes slow and steady doesn’t win the race. This simple saving and investing story illustrates why you can’t win by walking when everyone else is running.	2 Teach Kids Cash Is King In An Emergency Teach teens how to build a cash emergency fund so they don’t turn to a credit card or a payday loan with that first unexpected expense as an adult.
3 Formalize Your Loans To The Kids Don’t make fake loans to your kids. If you regularly forget or forgive loans to your kids, they’ll be in for a very rude and expensive awakening when they get that first loan as a young adult. Make real loans to your kids, so they’ll understand what real debt is all about.	4 Teach Generation K The Killer Money Habit Teach your kids early on that personal finance isn’t so much about math as it is about behavior and emotion. Slowing down and asking why can make all the difference. Reflection is a real impulse killer.	5 Teach Your Kid Economics With A Box Of Donuts One box of donuts, and your kid will be on her way to acing that future AP exam in Econ or, more importantly, saving some money. It’s all about understanding and optimizing marginal utility.	6 Teach Your Kids These Automated Micro-Saving Tricks A whole crop of automated micro-saving apps are hitting the market: Digit, Dyme, Acorns, Qapital, Tip Yourself and more. Use the same techniques with your kids so they know little by little, they can save a lot too.	7 Let Youngsters Struggle With Money Choices What’s the right amount of allowance for your youngster? The amount that forces your child to struggle with financial choices.	8 13 Pre-Teen Work-For-Hire Ideas, Plus One When it comes to building wealth, sometimes slow and steady doesn’t win the race. This simple saving and investing story illustrates why you can’t win by walking when everyone else is running.	9 Give Your Kids Some Dangerous Chores Burst the bubble wrap and challenge your kids to some “dangerous” chores. Just beyond the risk lies the reward: Confidence. Resilience. Pride.
10 Teach Your Kids The 48-Hour Rule Train your child to put some distance between the desire and the purchase.	11 Discuss Dee-1's Car Obsession With Your Kids Dawg, Dee-1 is not defined by his car. Or is he? This rapper will convince your kids that frugal cars rule.	12 Rethink Your Reward Economy Here’s why you might want to rethink your kid’s reward chart — at least for everyday chores and behavior.	13 Let Your Girl Scout Sell the Cookies Back off and let your Girl Scout sell the darn cookies, so she can learn valuable business (and life) lessons.	14 Ditch the Dismissive Money Comments Around the Kids Time to mute the dismissive money comments around the kids and turn on the open conversations. If you dismiss the little money conversations with your kids now, you’re in for some big ugly ones later.	15 Draw Your Kids Into Good Money Habits Draw your kids into money management discussions with a picture instead of driving them away with numbers.	16 Let Your Moral Money Compass Be Your Kid’s Guide Help set your kid’s moral compass in the right direction when it comes to money matters. You lead the way. They’ll follow. Today’s story is a great example.
17 Give Kids a Saturday Job Interview Instead of an Allowance Balance unpaid family responsibilities with money making opportunities using Maggie’s Saturday job interview system for kids.	18 Reinvest Your Teen’s Roth IRA Dividends By checking the boxes to reinvest dividends, your teen will get a valuable two-fer in that Roth IRA: extra compounding and dollar cost averaging. Win, win.	19 Teach Teens to Favor Stocks Over Bonds When it comes to building wealth, sometimes slow and steady doesn’t win the race. This simple saving and investing story illustrates why you can’t win by walking when everyone else is running.	20 Encourage Your Teenpreneur Without Distorting Reality Take Gary Vee’s kidpreneur parenting advice: Create positive permission for your kidpreneurs to compete and regroup, but don’t hand out any 8th place trophies.	21 Help Your Kids Build a Sweetheart Credit Score Teach your kids these 3 good habits now that lead to better credit scores and perhaps even lasting love later. Check out this new research on that second part.	22 Teach Your Kids Fuzzy Fun Money Mat This fun “math” tip will help your family decide whether you’re spending on things you truly value.	23 Show Kids How to Give Passwords the Finger How to make strong passwords is a personal finance skill kids need to master. Fingerprint tech may save much of the day, but passwords will likely linger. Here’s how to create a strong one that you can remember.
24 Let Teens Know There’s A Scholarship For That Lots of teens assume they can’t qualify for a scholarship. Lots of teens are wrong. There’s a scholarship out there with your teen’s name on it. Here’s how to find it.	25 Teach Your Teens How To File Taxes. For Free. Nobody has it better at tax time than a teen. Free file. No hard questions. No taxes due. A refund. Sweet. That’s why it’s the perfect time to teach your kid how to file taxes. Here’s how.	26 Show Your Kids a System For Not Thinking About Money Your kids need to know they simply can’t ignore money in the real world. But there is a way to rarely think about it. Here’s how.	27 Share This Amazing Money Secret With Your Kids The key to keeping your finances in order is actually ridiculously simple. Well, OK, Steve Martin finds it confusing. But, fortunately, your kids are way smarter than he is!	28 Advise Kids To Ignore Their Guts When Investing Teach your kids to heed the wise words of Benjamin Graham: “The investor’s worst enemy is likely to be himself.” Why? Your instincts will push you to buy high and sell low. When it comes to investing, it takes guts to ignore your gut.	29 How To Add The Investing Arrow To Your Kid's Financial Quiver Why aren’t you teaching your kids about investing? Too expensive, complicated, risky? Doesn’t have to be. Here’s the magic investing arrow for your kid’s financial quiver.	30 Teach Basic Budgeting With A Souvenir Allowance A souvenir budget on your next vacation can be a great way to teach kids basic budgeting, reduce whining, and save the family money. Win, win, win!
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday

A fool and his money are soon parted, but — thanks to you — your kid will be able to keep it together. Wise move.

P.S. If you’d like to continue the money conversations with your kids beyond financial literacy month, you can get fresh topics sent to your inbox by subscribing to Family Finance Favs here