I am so blessed to share with you that I have been chosen to be a part of Dave Ramsey and Rachel Cruze’s book launch team for their new book, Smart Money Smart Kids. I am so excited that I am able to share with you some of the things I have learned so far, from reading this new, invaluable resource. And yes, I did receive a copy of this book for free so I could tell you about it, but all of my opinions are definitely my own! 🙂
Honestly, this post could have been entitled, “Teach Your Children to Work…They’ll Thank You When They’re Older”, because they will.
As recent alumni of Financial Peace University, my husband and I are firm believers in the methods that Dave uses in his programs. We learned how to budget our money and make it work for us, not the other way around. For the first time in years, when we work at our budget (we use the Gazelle software), we are not afraid to look at the numbers. We’ve actually found that even on a one income budget, we have more money available to us than we thought we did. Now that we have learned the basics and realize all the missteps we made along the way, we want to make sure our young children do not have to go through what we did. We don’t want them to get to our age and be faced with their own poor choices, planning, and avoidance strategies that they will have learned from us. We are working ourselves out of a very uncomfortable place. The dreaded D word, debt. We don’t want that for our children. We doubt you want that for your children either.
Think about it. Even Barbie has a Mastercard. The princesses have cash registers with fake credit cards. It’s cool to little kids to swipe a card and get something in return. But it isn’t cool. It isn’t smart. And it certainly will only lead them to one place-being in debt. Our 8 year old son frequently asks about our debit card (which is ok to use). I always tell him that in order for that card to work, there has to be money in the bank. The only way money gets in the bank is if you work for it. I remember the first time I received money for writing a sponsored post on my blog. I made a huge deal out of it because they have seen me work tirelessly on my blogs and I wanted them to know that the money I received was because I worked hard for it. It wasn’t just handed to me. It wasn’t a gift. It was pay for work completed.
But how else could I explain the need to work, to give, to save, to spend?
Enter in Smart Money Smart Kids. This book is coming out at the right time for my family and I am sure, yours as well. Even if you have very little ones (younger than my 6 and 8 year olds), they can benefit from what is taught in this book. Dave and his daughter, Rachel explain the idea of a commission based system. I remember hearing about this in our class and it was a new way of thinking for me. I’m from the old-school family that gave allowances. We never really knew why we were getting paid or how much or when. All I knew was that if I polished and shined my dad’s shoes, I made money. That part made sense to me. It was above and beyond what I was expected to do as a family member. But I never knew why I got paid an allowance, so this idea of commission was intriguing.
According to Rachel, “Once your kids understand that money comes from work, they won’t be able to spend money on a toy without considering how much work went into actually making that money.”
My husband and I are working on a commission based system for our two children. When I told our children what our intentions were they were intrigued as well. Of course, our son wanted to know why he wasn’t going to earn a commission for making his bed. The answer was simple. As a member of our family, that is expected. It is not above and beyond what he normally should have to do. Commission based jobs are different. This week, two jobs were helping to clean the hardwood floors and clean the windows. Those are things that we do not normally ask them to do.
I decided that as children, they could benefit from a chart that they could see and that they could use to keep track of the jobs they do. So what was I to do? I created a commission based chart with space for 5 chores. At the end of the week, they can put a checkmark or sticker in the commission box. Being a homeschooling mom, I am always looking for lessons, so I have added spaces at the bottom for the child to calculate their commission. A FREE (WOO HOO!) downloadable pdf chart is available at the bottom of this post!
If you would like to read a bit more about this, Dave and Rachel are offering you a chance to preview the first two chapters of the book! All you have to do is click on Smart Money Smart Kids, enter your email and you will receive the preview! In the next few weeks, I will be blogging more about the book and some of my favorite quotes.
If you get the first two chapters, I would love to hear what you think about the book so far! Also, if you download my commissions chart, please let me know how you used it. I would love to hear how your children do with it!
Note: If you should get an error message below where the image of the pdf should be that says the “bandwidth limit has been reached”, please disregard it. This is a common occurrence on websites and as of this writing, no one knows for sure why this is happening. You can either just download the pdf using the link or you can refresh your page and that usually clears it up!
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