Summary – 5 tips to educate children about money

Every now and then a reader will send me a question for me to write a post on. A few weeks ago, Zakiah had requested our help in her comment to the article (One Sentence That Will Flood Your House With Stuff). She would like to know how to control her daughter’s bad spending habits. Currently they go out every week and will end up buying new clothes every time.

Educating children is definitely a work not for the faint-hearted. You will need to read a lot and ultimately to be familiar with the most updated techniques available. In addition to that you will need to modify the technique accordingly because every child is different. All these will be 10 times harder when it comes to educating teenagers. I know, I’ve been there.

Listed below are some tips you can use to kickstart that subtle course of valuing money.

1) Spending money to value money

Parenting expert are debating on this. Some of them believe that encouraging the child to save money is the best way to teach them about money. Another team of expert believe that the children will value money more if they are allowed to enjoy what they have saved.

I tend to agree with the latter. Encourage the children to save, but do not stop them from spending the money. Since they can’t spend what they don’t have, they will learn better about valuing money this way.

2) Use their shopping habits to your advantage.

If they like shopping, bring them shopping. Give themselves a budget of about $100 each and just when they were about to buy clothes that cost about $100, try to persuade them to check out other store. Highlight to them other clothes that cost slightly more expensive.

Now they have to choose whether spending the money they have now for cheap $100 clothes, or they can return home and save for a few more weeks for that more expensive clothes.

I know, this may sound counter productive. We want them to stop buying clothes instead of encouraging them buying. But believe me, in the long run, they will start to have that mindset of saving for a better thing. And when they start to think for their future, they will be more open to other money saving ideas.

3) Start a money saving competition

Announce a money saving competition to your children. Who ever can save the most will get their money doubled. The losers get nothing. You should make this as exciting as possible. A few points you need to know –

• Make it a one year long saving competition. Who ever save the most money in a year will get his/her money doubled. One year should be long enough to have a permanent impact in the children’s mind.

• Set up mini competition monthly. For example, who ever save the most in one month will get 100 points. The person with the most points collected in one year will be given another prize. This is to keep the excitement up through out the one year long competition.

• Maybe create task (money saving wise) that will give out more points.

• Put up ranking board to remind the children of the competition.

• The secret is to make it as exciting as possible without making it too complicated.

4) Give them an inspiration

Try to find a real life inspiration when it comes to money saving. You may have a relative who is a successful man and let him share the story of his success to the children. He must be a good storyteller. We don’t want them to be afraid of saving money now do we? Rehearse the story with him, and give him pointers on what to stress and what need not to. You know your daughters better right?

5) The ground rule of educating children about money

• Make it as subtle as possible. Children especially teenagers don’t respond well to a formal teaching.

• Keep the process exciting, more exciting that shopping.

• Help them visualize the high end target. For example, involve them in discussion to buy an expensive house. Ask them for help calculating the interest and monthly payment.

• You must have a clear policy on when to give money to the girls. For example, they are only given a pocket money of $300 per month. If they want more, they will have to wait for next month.

– I wonder –
Any other tips you guys might want to share about educating children about money?

————- Personal Note ————–
I was 10 years old if I’m not mistaken. And I had saved about $40 in my piggy bank (It’s the shape of an elephant really). I know because I keep track of how much money I have.

One day, my father’s friend came over and I accidentally broke / scratch his helmet. My father then made me pay for the damage and I paid for it cryingly. I think that must be one of the experience that greatly taught me about valuing money.

Photo Credit – Kevin

I am compelled to write a post about P1W1MAX’s fair usage policy because I was just made aware that such policy exist. Since I have been writing about the benefit of wimax, you might want to know about this policy first before you subscribe.

Basically, it is a policy that ensure every subscriber the best speed available. Whether you use a few hours a day or 24 hours a day, you will receive the best speed at anytime. In order to maintain that, P1W1MAX apparently is monitoring all bandwidth usage and once you used up all the 20GB bandwidth limits, your internet usage will be prioritize less. In other words, you will experience slower speed than the rest of the subscribers (You can still go online though)

The Cons

• Some of us do use the internet to download and upload large files. This can become a nuisance.

The Pros

• Everyone will receive their fair share of maximum speed. Personally, I think it is fair. We are paying customer too right?
• From my research, 20GB is the highest ceiling limit compared to other wireless competitors
• 20GB per month is roughly about 667MB per day, An average person who plays games, surfs and downloads will rarely exceed this.
• If 20GB limit is hit, you can still go online. It’s just that priority will be given to those who hasn’t reached their 20GB

I hope if P1W1MAX is reading this, at least they can

• Provide us with a mean to monitor the bandwidth usage.
• Maybe send us an email about a week before we used up our 20GB limits
• Provide an option to increase the limits by paying slightly and reasonably more.

There.. now you know.

Summary – 10 lines you can say to yourself after a failure

I am not perfect. Even though I write a personal development blog, it doesn’t mean that I am the most developed person on the planet. We will always be in the process to be slightly better everyday. That’s exactly what this blog is all about

Personal development is just like life. It doesn’t matter whether you will end up a prime minister or a clerk, what matter is how you get there. And along this journey, some mistakes are bound to happen.

I confess that I procrastinate once in a while (Ok, maybe a lot), I sometimes manage my finance poorly (bought an external drive when I don’t actually need it). My point is, despite my articles that describe how to combat procrastinate and good financial tips, I can still make mistake and I can sometimes fail to follow my own advice.

This is where it becomes a problem. For the average guy like us, each failure can have some effect like depression, stress etc. How then can we effectively come back from a failure. For example, how can I remanage my finance after an out of control shopping spree? Should I start back from zero? Or is there any other way?

These are some suggestion on how to make that come back; a few examples of lines you can say to yourself to reset your life after a failure.

1) Behold! My experiment on making mistakes has completed. Procrastination really takes about half of your life.

10) Get up and just do something

Conclusion

We all fail ourselves at some point in life. We have two options. Making the come back easier or harder for us. The answer should be obvious – Always aim to make things easier for you.

– I wonder –
What do you say to yourself after a failure?

————– Personal Note ———–
I have a friend who diet. And whenever she failed to follow her diet and ate fatty food, she would literally torture herself by vomitting it all out. She would then be upset and depressed with the failure that even a stranger will be able to see it in her face.

Believe me, nothing good can come from this self torture. So stop it already.

Photo Credit – Hamed Masoumi

Summary – Spoon-Feeding Effect of Reading

For the record, I love reading. Always have and always will. There’s no substitute to reading. It is the only portal to knowledge. If you want knowledge and wisdom, reading is the way to go. I’m not debating this so rest assured that you are not going to read about the benefit of reading today.

However, there is one side effect of reading that you really must know. If I can name it, I will call it Spoon-Feeding Effect of Reading. It is when you read a book, and you just believe and absorb everything you just read without ever drawing any conclusion from it.

For example, John is reading a book about politics. As we all know, the political stand of the author will always be mirrored in a book about politics. John had absorbed everything he read from the book that he is now an exact clone of the author when it comes to political stand.

This is one of the side effect of reading that you must know before attempting to read anything. You must never absorb everything the author wrote and make it your opinion.

You may ask, “what harm can this do?”. Well quite a lot actually. You could end up with these effects.

• No creativity – How creative can you be if you are nodding to everything the author gave you.

• Non-critical mind – You will need critical mind, when it comes to making good decision or brainstorming.

• Lazier mind – The mind is like any other muscle in your body. You exercise them, it gets stronger. Vice versa.

• No individuality – Have you ever met a person, and you notice immediately that he is different from the rest of us. He stands out naturally. That is because he is not a clone of anyone.

Reading will always be the best way to learn. But you should also know the best way to read. What you should consider when reading a book are as follows:

• Read the book.

• Try to grasp the message in the book.

• Search your mind for your own opinion about the topic at hand.

• Compare notes between the message and yours. The author can’t be always right and he can’t also be always wrong.

• Draw your own conclusion to the matter.

You may find these steps very simple, but you will be surprised to know that almost all readers fail to practise them. It is always easier to take the author’s word for it.

Conclusion

Books and blogs are usually written by smart people. And the readers are usually very keen to learn more about the subject from these smart people. What better way to be smarter than to learn it from smart people. You just need to make it a habit to develop your own conclusion from anything you read.

Your conclusion can be wrong. It can also turn out to be a smarter approach. What ever it is, it will always be yours. Nothing beats that.

– I wonder –
Besides fiction, what other types of books do you read?

———— Personal Note —————
I remember when I was a child, people often asked what my hobby was? I will then answered almost immediately, “Reading”. I guess reading was just the easiest answer or maybe I knew that people will stop asking when you answered “Reading”.

Photo Credit – Lin Pernille