30 Top Money Parenting Tips For 30 Days Of Financial Literacy Month

“A fool and his money are soon partying.” ~Steven Wright

That always cracks me up.

But, financial literacy is no joke. Even if National Financial Literacy Month does kick off on April Fool’s day every year.

We don’t want our kids to be money dunces. And we probably don’t want them partying with their money either.

To help you steer your kids clear of those money pratfalls, I’ve scanned the analytics over at my family finance tips blog and picked out the top 30 by all-time traffic.

Here they are grouped by 5 categories: earning, spending, saving, giving, and investing.

Earning Tips

1. Replace Chore Charts With Money Requests To Promote A Proactive Work Ethic — Have you ever considered ditching the traditional chore and allowance systems? Help your kid get from dog-eat-dog to top dog in tomorrow’s work world with this proactive alternative.

2. Calibrate Chore Payments With Real Data — If you’re paying kids for chores, here’s how to calibrate your payments instead of just guessing.

3. Add Consequences To Allowance With A Chore Fail Chart — Here’s a money system for young kids that can give parents the ease of an allowance without the entitlement and the accountability of a chore chart without the hassle.

4. Pay Your Teen To Brown Bag It For Lunch — As kids get into the teen years, frugal habits like the brown bag lunch come under pressure. Here’s one way to make the brown bag lunch cool — or at least profitable — for your teen.

5. Pay Your Kid To Do Some Dirty Work — Curious to know what kind of dirty work parents are paying their kids to do? Here are some examples and benefits.

6. Pay For The Studying Not The Grade, If At All — If you’re paying your kids for grades, consider this more effective approach instead.

(Not) Spending Tips

7. Post Wants On The Fridge To Chill Your Child’s Spending — Here’s a clever parenting trick for putting a chill on impulse spending by kids.

8. Show Kids The Difference Between Frugal And Cheap — Being frugal is a virtue. Being cheap is not. Teach your kids the difference.

9. Clean Up Your Kid’s Spotty Bill Payment Record — Can your kid handle making consistent monthly payments for an online subscription like Spotify? FamZoo data says many can’t. Here’s why it’s time to make your kid face the music.

10. Don’t Give Cash To Your Teens — Are you still handing cash over to your teens? Here are 6 reasons to replace the dollars with a card.

11. Make Kids Submit Written Proposals For Questionable Purchases — When your kid wants to purchase something that falls in the gray area, make her submit a written proposal. Here’s why.

12. Use Reimbursements To Condition Teens To Maintain A Spending Buffer — Here are two important personal finance lessons your teens can learn using a reimbursement process for everyday purchases.

Saving Tips

13. Maintain A Net Worth Spreadsheet With Your Teen — A net worth spreadsheet is one of the best techniques I’ve found to help my teens understand the big picture of personal finance. How to lay out a road map to their financial independence one cell at a time.

14. Motivate Kids To Maintain Value With A Trade-In Deal — Don’t want your kids being cavalier about their possessions? Try this trade-in value trick.

15. Offer Kids A Savings Match With Strings Attached — Encourage your kid to save by offering a matching contribution, but attach some strings to send the right message.

16. Review 529 Statements With Your Teen Every Quarter — Here are 6 valuable lessons your teen can learn from 529 statements if you’re willing to make a 15 minute investment every 3 months. See if you’re up for the challenge.

17. Pre-Negotiate Your Teen’s Summer Paycheck Savings Split — Agree on this summer paycheck strategy to teach your teen the Warren Buffett saving rule and jump-start a smart payroll deduction habit.

18. Teach Your Kids These Automated Micro-Saving Tricks — Teach your kids that little-by-little can do the trick when it comes to savings. Try one of these 5 micro-savings tricks to drive the message home.

Giving Tips

19. Play Gratitude Pictionary With The Family — Here's a novel, interactive way for everyone in the family to express what they’re grateful for — and have lots of fun doing it.

20. Make a Gratitude List With Your Child — Show your kids the path to true happiness and riches with this simple exercise.

21. Help Your Kid Say “How Can I Help?” — A hunch: learning to say “How can I help?” might help your child achieve successful financial outcomes in the future. Even if it doesn’t, you’ll never tire of hearing those magic words.

22. Let Your Kid Choose The Spend-Save-Give Allocation — Don’t dictate the spend-save-give allocation. Let your kids decide. Here’s how. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.

23. Nudge Your Kid's Charitable Impulses With Giving Data — This data might be the nudge your kids need to up their charitable giving games.

24. Give Your Kid A Separate Giving Card — Here’s how you can let your kids own the end-to-end charitable giving experience — even online.

Investing Tips

25. Show Teens The Top Of the Stock Market — Try this fun visual prop for teaching your teen some important investing wisdom: timing the stock market is a fool’s errand.

26. Show Kids What The S&P 500 Looks Like — Kids hear about stock indexes in the headlines all the time — the Dow is down, the S and P is up, the NASDAQ is flat. But do they have any idea what an index is? Here’s an easy, fun way to show them the what and why.

27. Fully Fund Your Working Teen’s Roth IRA — Here’s why it makes sense to max out your working teen’s Roth IRA, even if they already blew through all their paychecks.

28. Show Kids This 2 Million Dollar Picture Of An Early Saving Start — How do you get teens to really appreciate just how important it is to start saving early? Vague talk is cheap. It’ll be ignored. But this precise picture might be worth 2 million dollars.

29. Plot Your Longest Market Losing Streak Since High School — If you had invested in the S&P 500 every year since high school, what would your longest losing streak have been? Mine would have been 12 years! Here’s a simple spreadsheet to show your win/loss streaks and teach your kids why they should invest.

30. Set Up A Smart Competition To Make Investing Lessons Fun For Kids — Betting on a favorite stock is fun but stupid. Buying an index fund is smart but boring. So how do you make smart investing lessons fun for kids? Here’s one way.

Phewww!

Now that we’ve gotten serious about money with our kids, let’s get back to a little levity. From Steven to Steve:

I love money.

I love everything about it.

I bought some pretty good stuff. Got me a $300 pair of socks. Got a fur sink. An electric dog polisher. A gasoline powered turtleneck sweater.

And, of course, I bought some dumb stuff, too.

~ Steve Martin

Don’t let your kids be dumb with money like Steve. Try some of the tips above, and your kids and their money won’t soon be parted. I can’t make any promises about the partying though. Hey, college happens.