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Giving Allowance to Teach Financial Literacy
Episode 15112th December 2024 • Become A Calm Mama • Darlynn Childress
00:00:00 00:26:43

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Recently, I’ve coached a few different moms about allowance and chores. These concepts often go together, but I think about them as two separate pieces. Today, I’ll teach you how to use giving allowance to teach financial literacy to your kids. 

You’ll Learn:

  • Why I don’t believe you should pay your kid to do chores
  • Financial lessons all kids should learn
  • The value of giving an allowance
  • How to use allowance to teach financial literacy 

Giving allowance gives your kid the ability to have some money in their pocket so they can learn how to spend, how to save, how to have regret, and how to feel proud. Listen to learn how.

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Why Financial Literacy Matters

Managing money is a skill - and an important one. When you want to teach your kids how to read, you give them books. When you want to teach your kids about their feelings, you emotionally coach them about their feelings. When you want to teach them how to count or do math, you give them small items that they can count and manipulate.

So if you want to teach your kids about money, you have to give them some money. 

There are a lot of things I want my kids to learn and understand about money. In order to do that, they have to make decisions and have a lot of different experiences with money.

I want them to experience the feeling of having some money and then spending it. I want them to spend money and be thrilled by the purchase. And I also want them to have the feeling of spending money on something that’s not good quality that breaks right away or that they regret.

I want them to have the feeling of saving their money in order to get something. But I also want them to have the feeling of wanting something and not having enough because they didn't save.

I even want them to have the experience of paying for fines. Sometimes, in life, we make a mistake and we have to pay money to fix it. 

Ultimately, I want them to experience both success and failure when it comes to making decisions and spending money. This is how we learn.

 

The Allowance-Chores Connection

My take on allowance and chores might be a little different than you’re used to. While the two are connected, I don’t actually believe that you should pay your kids to do chores. 

Allowance is meant to teach financial literacy. Chores teach kids how to be in community. As a part of your family community, they should participate and help out…just because they live there. Both help teach responsibility.

So if you’re not paying your kid to do chores, how do they fit together?

As a member of the family, your child will have jobs to do around the house. There will be expectations for them to meet. 

If they don’t do their jobs, what happens? Often, you end up doing the job for them, and they’ll need to pay you back for the time and energy it took you to do that. 

Not doing their chore is a mistake. When you make mistakes, you have to pay for them in some way. You have to make it right. One way is for them to pay you back in time. If you did one of their chores, they can do one of yours. Another way is to pay you back in money.

For example, you might give your kid $5 a week for allowance. One night, you realize they didn’t take out the trash, so you do it before bed. The next day (or the next time you pay allowance), you say, “This chore that I did cost $1,” so they owe you that or you take it out of their allowance for the next week. 

The shift is that the amount of their allowance is set, but you are docking their pay for things they didn’t do. 

 

Giving Allowance to Teach Financial Literacy

These are some tips and things to think about to use an allowance as a financial literacy tool. 

 

Decide how much allowance you’ll give. This is a personal decision that depends on your financial situation, how many kids you have, etc. The cool thing is that when you start giving your kid allowance and stop buying extra stuff (if you have been), you’ll have a better handle on your own money.

In my opinion, $1 a week is great up until age 5-7. Then, you can raise it a little bit. We did $5 a week for a really long time with our boys. 

Once they hit high school, it was more like $20 a week, because they were paying for food, movies, bowling, etc. when they were out with their friends. Now, in college, we give them slightly more than is necessary for the week or month, and they use that to pay for any extras. 

 

Decide what you’re willing to pay for and what your kid has to pay for themselves. For example, if you’re going to a carnival, what will you provide? What extras does your kid have to buy for themselves? Maybe you pay for their admission or a ride wrist band or one sweet treat. Anything beyond that, they’ll need to pay for on their own. Decide in advance and communicate it clearly.

The idea is that you are still providing for them, but your child has some money for extras. 

 

Have a safe place to keep money. For kids 12 and under, you want a piggy bank or a place where they can physically see their money. We want to make it concrete. A bank account is a little too vague for kids this age. It’s hard for them to understand how much is there and available. 

Around age 12 or 13 is a good time to open a bank account. I really like the Greenlight debit cards for this. Monthly paper statements are also a great way to review their finances with them and get them into the habit of looking at their money - how much they have, how much they spent and how they feel about those choices. This can also lead to discussions about their financial and savings goals.

 

Give them some freedom. You might want to tell your kid they can’t buy something if you think it’s junk, too expensive, etc. But this is where they start to have those valuable experiences. When they feel that excitement or buyer’s remorse, it opens up a conversation about budgeting, saving, and lots of other good topics.

I’d rather see your kids buy stupid stuff at age 7 than get to college and waste a ton of money because they haven’t learned those lessons. This is how they practice. 

 

Optional: Set limits around what they can buy. A big one here is sweets. Your kid might be happy to spend $20 on candy. It’s okay for you to say, “You’re welcome to spend your money as long as you don’t spend it on sweets.” Or maybe they can buy sweets on the weekend, but not during the week. 

⚠️Caution: Don’t set these kinds of limits right away. Let the situation play out a bit. Let them do their own thinking, and see if they come to their own conclusion. If something doesn’t play out the way you want (in my case, my kids were buying ice cream every Wednesday with zero regrets), you can always pull back and create a new limit. 

 

Optional: Offer opportunities to earn more. If your kid is saving for something, you can create extra chores or jobs outside their normal responsibilities that they can earn money for. Quality control it, and make sure they do the job right. This gives them the feeling of working hard to earn something they want. 

 

Giving allowance gives your kid the ability to have some money in their pocket so they can learn how to spend, how to save, how to have regret, and how to feel proud. It also gives them a new way to repair their mistakes. 

Let them try, fail, succeed and learn so that they’re taking steps toward financial responsibility.

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Transcripts

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Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn Childress. I'm

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a life and parenting coach. And today on the podcast, I wanna

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talk about allowance and financial

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literacy and how I teach the concept of

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allowance to my clients. And I brought this up

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today because the last few weeks in the Calm Mama Club, I have

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coached a few different moms about allowance and how they

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connect to chores and whether you should connect them to chores, whether you should

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pay kids for doing their chores and how it all works.

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So I wanted to break it all down on the podcast because I realized I

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had not done a podcast episode on allowance

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and chores. Today's podcast episode is not

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really going to be about chores. Because as you'll see, the way

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that I teach allowance is really

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around the concept of financial literacy. And then I teach

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chores around being in a community. I will

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connect chores and allowance in this podcast, but not in the

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way that you think that you typically think about them because we're not

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gonna pay kids to do chores. Because as a part of your

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community, in your family, they should participate in that

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community because they live there. Right? Because they participate in that

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community. So we want our kids to have chores so that they learn about

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being in a community and being responsible, and we want them to have money

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so they learn about being responsible with money.

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Okay. No joke. I just got interrupted while recording this podcast from

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my 18 year old son, who's a freshman in college, asking me

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if I could send him his weekly allowance for college. Isn't that so

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funny? It it's just made me chuckle. Okay.

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Now I wanna talk to you about financial literacy, not so much

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what it means, but just how important it is to give your

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kids the skills around managing their money.

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And I want to remind you that when you wanna teach your kids how

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to read, you give them books. When you wanna

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teach your kids about their feelings, you emotionally coach them

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about their feelings. When you wanna teach them how to count

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or to do math, you give them things that they can count, little

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manipulatives, little math games. So if you wanna teach

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your kids about money, you have to give them some. That's

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my frame of reference when it comes to allowance is I

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want to give my kids some money so that they

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learn all sorts of things about money. So

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one thing I want them to learn when it comes to money is I want

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them to learn the feeling of having some

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money and then spending that money, making

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that decision to spend the money. I want them to

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have the feeling of spending it and being thrilled by the purchase

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and being really proud of themselves. And I also want them to have the

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feeling of spending money on something that's

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not quality or that breaks really fast or that they

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regret and have a little buyer's remorse.

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I want them to have a lot of different experiences with money,

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which means I need to give them some and then let them make a lot

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of decisions about it. I also want them to have

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the feeling of saving their money in order

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to get something. But I want them

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also to have the feeling of wanting something and not having

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enough because they didn't save. So in all these

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examples, I'm giving them experiences with

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being successful as well as failing. I want

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them to have money and to use it in ways that

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are great and not use it and use it in ways that aren't great. I

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want them to have money and save and feel that really great feeling of

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having a lot of money and then buying something if they wanna buy something or

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whatever. And I want them to feel that sad feeling of, oh, I wish I

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would have saved my money so I could afford blankety

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blank. I also want them to experience

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that the experience of paying

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for fines, for lack of better term.

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Like, sometimes in life, I might make a mistake. I

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might not pay my credit card bill on time, or I might

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accidentally leave my clothes in the washing machine, and they get

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mildew or something like that. I might make a mistake in

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life, speeding ticket, or don't turn off the,

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the heater, and I get a big gas bill. Right? I

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sometimes do things in life that make then I make a

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mistake, then I have to pay money to fix it.

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It costs me money when I make mistakes. So I want my kids to have

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a little bit of money, so that they can also pay

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actual money for the mistakes that they make. Now,

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primarily, what I'm talking about here is chores.

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So I'm gonna start there with the way that I think about

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allowance with chores. Imagine you have a little, you know, 7 year

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old and their job is to empty the dishwasher when they get

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home from school or make their bed or wipe

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down the sink, you know, in the after brushing their

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teeth or putting their socks and shoes away, some kind

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of task like that. And it's just a standard routine.

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I'll teach you in another podcast episode how to create chores,

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but like, how to create the rhythm of chores in your

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family. But just thinking about the fact that you have expectations,

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your kids kinda know what they're supposed to do. Right? They have jobs.

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And I love that. I want your kids to have lots of jobs. Now, what

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happens if they don't do their job? That's one of the biggest questions

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we get about, you know, when you have a kid and they don't do their

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chores, what are you supposed to do about it? So here's how I do

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it, is they have their chores.

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And if I have to do their chore for them,

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then they need to pay me for my time

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or my energy or the attention.

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They, they need to pay me back because I did their chore for them.

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So it needs to cost them something. Not doing their chore is a

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mistake. And when you make mistakes, you have to

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pay for them, right? You have to make them right. You have

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to do restitution and fix things.

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And so that's how I handled

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chores for the most part throughout the kids' elementary school

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and even into high school. I would give them allowance.

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Right? They would have some money that, you know, they could also earn more money

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by doing extra chores that weren't their regular chores. So they'd have a little

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bit of spending money. And then if they didn't do something,

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like bring the trash cans in, that was one of their big jobs, empty the

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dishwasher, obviously clean up after themselves. They didn't

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do one of their chores, and I had to do it because I went to

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bed and realized they went to bed and I realized they hadn't done it. Or

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I go into the bathroom when I see the sink, something like that, and I

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wipe it down. I would make a little note and I'd say, oh, this chore

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cost $1. And then I would either

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go the next day and say, hey, you owe me a dollar because I did

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your chore. Or when it was time for allowance and I went

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to give them the $5 I would hold back some of the money and I'd

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say, oh, this is to pay me for the chores that I did for you.

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You don't have as much because I'm docking your allowance

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to pay for the chores that you didn't do. So I

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love that concept. I'm not paying you

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for doing your chores. The the allowance

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is set. But if I have to do your chores

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for you, then you're paying me.

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Isn't that great? So

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we wanna give our kids, an allowance. Right? So that they can

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learn how to manage money, make mistakes,

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how that to use money to pay for mistakes that they've made,

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to spend money, to save money, to have all of

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those feelings. So one of the things that I've

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noticed has to come alongside when you start

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with allowance is that you start

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to eliminate or dramatically reduce

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the things that you buy for your kids. So let

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me break this down. Imagine that I'm going to, like,

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a carnival, like, a state fair or like a local

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carnival or or your school might have kind of a

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festival or something like that. So as a parent, I decide

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what I'm willing to buy and I decide that in advance.

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I'm not impulsively getting there and just being like, oh my god. My kids keep

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asking me for money and I'm so overwhelmed and you don't wanna say no. I

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want you to think about how much you wanna spend, what you're willing to pay

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for. So I'm like, I'm gonna give you each, you

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know, $20 wristband or $20 in

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coins or whatever the little thing is, and I'm willing to buy one

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sweet treat. Right? Then anything

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extra that you want, you can pay for it.

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So that kind of idea is So that your kids have to have

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some money if they want to pay for

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something extra. So imagine you go to

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Target or you go to, you know, a a drugstore or something like that.

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And they're like, mom, I want to buy this, you know, little army men

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or this little doll or these, you know, these stickers or these, you know,

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stick on tattoos or something like that. One of those

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impulse buys, you know. And then they say: mom, mom, mom, can you buy

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this for me? And you can say: oh, no, no, no. I'm not spending my

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money. Did you bring your money? They'll probably say: no, no. I

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don't have any money with me. I have money. My money is at the house.

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Can you Can I pay you back? And then you can decide whether

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you want to lend money that day or not. So you can say no, the

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bank's closed. I'm not open for lending money. Or if it's something

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that you don't mind them having, you can say: sure. Go ahead. I'll happy to

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lend you money. And then when they get home, you give they hand you the

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money back. Now, what form is this money in?

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It's really important for kids under 12,

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even a little bit older, but for sure under 12 to have some sort

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of piggy bank or a place to hold their money

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so that they can see it and touch it and notice if it's

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growing, if it's little bit of a lot. We wanna make

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it concrete. So having a bank account and having a

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money in the bank is a little bit vague for them. It's hard

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for them to understand how much it is, how much is

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available, those kinds of things. So we want our kids to have

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a piggy bank of some kind. It doesn't have to be, like, an

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actual piggy bank. We just want them to have something that they can put their

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money in. I think my kids had, like,

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well, some of them they had sometimes they had wallets, which was fun, but they'd

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always lose them. But they'd have a little basket in their room, and they'd have

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money in these little baskets. So when you think about

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having your kids, when you are out and about,

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start to buy them less stuff. Or when you're going to buy

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them something, tell them in advance. And then let them decide if

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they wanna buy something extra that it would be their money.

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Now, what people often ask me is should they be able

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to buy whatever they want? What if it's a piece of junk?

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What if it's candy? Right? What if it's,

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you know, something they wanna buy for their friend or they wanna spend too much

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money on something? Then this is where we want

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to begin to separate ourselves a little

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bit and let them have that experience. Let them figure out for

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themselves what they wanna spend money on. Let them buy

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something and regret it. Let them buy something and be happy about

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it. Let them find the feeling of giving a gift to a friend

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and spending a lot of money. But then the next time when you go to

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the carnival or you go to to the drugstore or wherever, and

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they realize, oh, I spent all my money on that one thing.

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So, yeah, that's tough. It's gonna take you a while.

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How how many weeks did it take you to get that much

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money? Do you know? And you start doing the budgeting, you start

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doing the math, you start having conversations with them. If you give

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them $5 a week and they want to buy something that costs

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$60 that's 3 months of savings.

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That's a lot of savings. That's a lot of time to not buy something

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that they would want, something smaller,

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something less expensive. So we want to stop buying

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toys on demand, snacks on demand, extras on

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demand. We want to help our kids look forward to

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birthdays and holidays for the special items, but also having

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that desire of saving your money to get something.

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Now, obviously, with someone with ADHD or, I mean, most kids in

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general, they're gonna have a lot of regret. They're

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gonna buy things that are dumb. I

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would rather your kids buy stupid stuff at age 7

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than to waste tons of money when they're in college.

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I want them to learn the feeling of not having enough money to

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get something or to have something that they want. I want

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them to have that experience. So we have to give them these small

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examples and moments where they get to practice spending

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money and things like that. So you have to start buying

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less. Now, if your kid was trying to save something,

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you know, save $60 and they only have, you know,

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$20, you are welcome to create

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chores or extra jobs that you can pay them

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for. And you can be really generous. You can be stingy. I don't doesn't matter.

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You can say, okay, you know, if you wanna do my chores for me, these

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are things that I am responsible for. You're welcome to do those

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and here's the going rate. So you could just make it up. If you

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want them to, you know, do the laundry or mop

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the floors or, I don't know, small chores

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that you do in the house that you think that they're capable of doing properly,

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you go ahead and give them that that responsibility. And then you

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can quality control it and just say, nope. This is not you do

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not do a $5 job. This is only a $4 job. If you want

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the full $5, you're gonna need to do this and that. Right? Go

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back and have them do that. That is really that feeling of,

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like, you know, working hard to earn something

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and to keep at it and to, you

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know, do the right do it do it properly and to get

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paid appropriately. That's a good feeling. So you can teach

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your kids the value of working to get money,

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working to earn, and then also how

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important it is to do good work in order to

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get your full pay. So you can teach a little bit of work ethic

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and work habits in there when it comes to earning money.

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So we have, like, a baseline for allowance and then we

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have a, extra

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opportunities if you want to. You don't have to. You actually don't have to do

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any of this at all. You don't have to give your kids money if you

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don't want to. You don't have to buy them extra stuff ever. There's no

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requirement that you add anything to your life whatsoever.

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I just know that some people are interested in teaching their kids about

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money, and this is a good strategy to do it.

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Now, how much money is is one of the

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questions I get. And, obviously, that's very personal depending

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on your financial situation, where you live, what your

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kids have access to. You know, if

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you had 4 kids and you give each one $5 a

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week, then that's $20. That's $80 a month. Like, it can

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add up quite a bit. The cool thing though is when you start

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giving your kids allowance and you stop buying extra stuff,

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you'll actually have a better handle on your own,

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income, you know, your own money because you won't be just kind of throwing

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money over here and there and buying everybody a Starbucks or everybody an ice

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cream when you weren't planning on it because those are the kinds of things that

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we're gonna pull back. We're gonna say, no. I'm not gonna buy those today. I'm

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not willing to spend my money. You can spend yours.

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So you'll probably actually spend less on your kids if you give them a

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decent size allowance. What's a decent size allowance?

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You can start this around 3. And I feel like $1

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a week is great, up until

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they're, like, 5 or 6, something like that. 7, you can keep

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it to $1. And then you wanna kinda go up to a little bit more,

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$2, $3, $5. Our thing was

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$1 until you were 6. And then but I always did the

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boys at the same. So, like, sore it was 4. He got a little bit

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extra. And then we did $5 for a really long time. It was

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$20 a month. That was seemed to be about right for them

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in terms of stuff that they would probably wanna get. And then when they were

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in high school, I started to change. I gave them

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much more, but they had to buy their food when they were

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out with their friends. They had to pay for their movies. They had to pay

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for their bowling nights and whatever that kind of thing

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was. They'd have to pay for those things. So it's more like

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$20 a week. But if they saved it, they could have

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$80 in a month and they would be able to do something really fun like

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go to a concert. That's the same concept I have now

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with how much money I give to my kids in college

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is I give them slightly more than is necessary for the

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week or for the month. 1 kid wants it weekly, 1 kid wants it

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monthly cause they're trying to figure out how to budget. And I

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give them a little bit extra because I've told them many times I'm

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not willing to pay for spring break trips. I'm not willing

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to pay for concerts. I'm not willing to pay for extra stuff

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that comes up. You have to save your money

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for those things. And they consistently don't have any

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money. They blow it. So they're learning. They're figuring it out.

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Okay. So the last thing I wanted to talk about was sweets and candy

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because we I've given that as an example. So it's like, you

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know, I'm gonna I'm willing to buy one sweet treat at the school

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carnival. And that's only if you wanted to. You could also say

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0. Now what if your kids like, I wanna spend $20. I

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brought all my money and I wanna buy all of the sweets. Right? Some

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of kids are gonna want that. You are, as

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a parent, I've talked about this on the podcast, you are

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responsible for what your kids eat,

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when they eat and where they eat. Now, even

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if it's their money, you always have that

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right of refusal. So you can

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say no, I'm not having you

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buy extra sweets today. You can spend your money

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on other things. You're welcome to spend your money as long as you don't spend

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it on sweets. That's like, you know, when my kids

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were in elementary school, we would go to this park every day. Every Wednesday after

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school and there would be a ice cream truck. And that

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ice cream truck would come and the boys knew and they would bring their dollar

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and they would bring their, you know, like, very excited about it. And

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they would buy, like, Spongebob Squarepants ice cream. It was, like, just such

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junk that I and then finally, I said to them, you are welcome to

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spend your money on non sweet things during

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the school week. So I just kinda made this new rule where it's like,

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you can maybe buy things on the weekends for sweets, but not during Monday

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through Friday. I just made it up. And then they were like,

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oh, okay. That's the rule. I can't buy anything. They're sad. And

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that's fine. It's okay. So you get to say, no. You have

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the veto. I would caution you.

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Like, the first few times the boys bought ice cream on the ice cream truck,

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I was like, fine. Whatever. But then I didn't, like,

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make it a thing. But then it became kind of a habit and they I

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was, like, essentially giving them money every week so they could buy stuff from the

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ice cream truck that I didn't really want them to do. I realized that didn't

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feel aligned. Then I pulled back, made a new rule.

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So sometimes you kinda need to let let the failure happen or find out

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what you're truly uncomfortable with. Maybe it's a one off. I actually want

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them to buy some ice cream and then go, well, that was stupid. I'm done

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with it, and I wasted my money. Like, I wanted them to have that

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regret. But this in this case, it wasn't happening. They were, like,

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excited every Wednesday. And I was, like, okay. No. I'm gonna fix this.

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So I wanna caution you to not say no right away, but

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let the situation play out a little bit.

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See if they're gonna come to their own conclusion. Let them do

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their own thinking. You can talk about it. You can say, oh,

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remember, okay, you have $5. If you buy this thing for

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$2.50, you're gonna have $2.50. But remember, this

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weekend, we're going to whatever you're going to.

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Do you want to only have $2 or do you wanna

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have $5? So you can start talking about

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how do you wanna spend your money thinking about the future, giving

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them perspective. But if they don't have any money, they're

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just asking you for money, then that's a very different conversation. You're not

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asking them to think about their money. You're just telling them no,

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and they don't understand why you're saying no. You

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probably don't even really understand why you're saying no half the time. Right?

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So we to recap, we wanna give our kids

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some money. We wanna give them some allowance. And that

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just gives them the ability to have some money in their pocket

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that you can teach them how to spend, how to save,

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how to have regret, how to feel proud. And,

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also, they have some money to pay you back for when you do

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things for them, like their chores. And that

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way, you have a little bit of, you know, another

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way to have them re make repair back to you using

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money. You don't have to. You can also just use time. Hey. You didn't do

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your chores. The, I did your chores today, so you

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can do mine. I'm happy to take you to soccer once you have done these

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three things, like vacuumed the floor, tidied up the pillows,

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you know, wipe down the doorknobs, you know, small little things like

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that. You you can just have them repair back to you in

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time. But, also, if they have some money, you can have them repair back to

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you in money, which is pretty cool.

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Alright. I think that is all I had to say about it.

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Oh, I guess I was gonna say when to open in a bank account.

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I would recommend more a little bit older, to be honest, like, when they're

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12 or 13. And the green light cards

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are really helpful because they can see that

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they have you know, they can see their you give them a certain amount

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of money, and then they can, like, practice with the debit card thing. But it's

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it's very interesting how, like, my kids have a credit

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card and they have a debit card, and they really like

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using their debit card more than credit because they can see the money

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going down. With the credit card, they don't

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see it. They just kind of they're, like, waiting to just get to their max

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or something. It's not real as much as, like, oh, I only have,

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you know, $22 left in the bank. So they're constantly checking

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their debit accounts. Now they're older. So how did they

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learn how to do that is through having allowance and then

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eventually having jobs, like actual jobs where they,

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you know, made money and then learning how to manage that money

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completely. Paying for gas and, you know, buying their own

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clothing and paying for their food out and their drinks out,

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like their Starbucks and their Red Bulls and whatever.

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That's later. So when they're in middle school, you

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kinda wanna establish, like, okay, we're gonna have a a bank account.

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Now, if your kid has a ton of money from grandparents and you have to

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make a bank account, like, of course, but realize that they don't know anything about

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it. They're not connected to the bank account. You are you're the

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one who's managing that. The only money that they really manage is the stuff that's

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in their hands until around 12. Now, when you open

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up a bank account for them, whatever age, I

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suggest you opt for monthly statements, paper statements.

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And I hopefully, banks still offer that where you can get something in the

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mail because then it's addressed to them. They open it.

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They start to review it. You can review it with them, and you get into

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the habit of looking at how much you have and how much you spent

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and, like, are you happy about your things you bought? What are

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your goals? What do you wanna save money for? Are there anything

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extras? Do you wanna spend money on doing paying me for your chores? Do you

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wanna keep doing that? Or would you rather just do them? So you're having a

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conversation with that monthly statement, which is really

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cool. Okay. I

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think that is it. If you have any questions,

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of course, you are always welcome to join the Come Mama Club. We talk

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about this kind of stuff in our weekly group sessions. That is

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on Tuesdays at 9:30 Pacific. We meet every Tuesday for

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about an hour. Lots of you know, the people come. The moms come. They ask

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questions. And the moms ask me questions and I coach

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them. And then there's some chat happening with, like, in the chat. There's lots of

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really good ideas going on in there all the time, which I love. So the

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Calm Mama Club is always available to you to join. It's $30 a

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month. You get the online course, that Calm Mama handbook, weekly

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group coaching, as well as a bunch of other online

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resources. So that's pretty cool. Or you could reach out to

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me and DM me on Instagram at darlin childress

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or reply to an email if you're on my email list. And just let

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me know, like, oh, hey. I have a question about this. And I'm happy to

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answer. Alright, mamas. I hope you are having

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a great week and that you've learned something today about

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money. And I will talk to you next time.

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