20
Sep

Alberty: New ways to teach children about fiscal responsibility

Posted by laurel

Alberty: New ways to teach children about fiscal responsibility

If you follow this column, you might remember a past missive about teaching my 5-year-old son, Walker, about money. We opened a checking account and he even has his own debit card. He receives $2 per day for good behavior and chores and can make a purchase on payday, which is every Friday. The idea was to teach Walker about the value of a dollar, saving and responsibility. Payday was good in theory.

Walker did learn the value of money and even saved for five weeks to buy a toy for his father (of course it was a toy he also would enjoy). Walker also learned to overcome some of his shyness as we required him to make his own purchase, which meant he had to converse with the check-out clerk. Unfortunately, payday was not a complete success.

Through my own fault, I did not have well structured tasks for Walker to earn his income. We also accumulated a ridiculous number of toys due to the weekly purchase. Due to the excess, he became disenchanted with toys and would spend an hour at a time on Fridays in the toy aisle unable to find anything of interest. It always seemed to end in a disagreement and disappointment with whatever toy he chose. None of us were enjoying payday.

Recently, one of my friends came up with a new way to teach her son about money and responsibility. It was a vast improvement from my attempt at payday. In their family, a calendar is posted with measurable daily tasks. Each task is worth a quarter with the potential to earn $1 per day five days a week. His tasks range from good behavior at school to putting away his clean laundry. They have three jars for deposits: spend, save and give. The parents do not influence his choice in deposit.

Another mother in our group of friends has decided to implement the same strategy with a twist. They implemented a match of any amount deposited into the save and give jar. This new strategy is a fantastic motivator for developing healthy wealth building habits.

I am so excited to try this new strategy with Walker. He already is enthusiastic and looking forward to making the calendar and jars. Sometime in the future I will update my column with how the new strategy is working out.

• Laurel S. Alberty is a certified financial planner and president of Watkinsville-based Alberty Financial Planning Services Inc.

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Sunday, September 20, 2009

Category : Athens Banner Herald Column by Laurel Alberty


One Response to “Alberty: New ways to teach children about fiscal responsibility”


Danny Kofke September 21, 2009

Hi Ms. Alberty,

I hope this note finds you well. I just read your article in today’s Athens Banner Herald and thought I would share what I do to teach my daughter financial responsibility.

My name is Danny Kofke and I am a special education teacher and author up the road from you in Jackson County. My wife is a stay-at-home mom to my two young daughters – Ava, age 5 and Ella, 2. We don’t make a large salary so we have to be frugal with our money. We are trying to pass on our values to our children.

I have a way that I teach Ava about money. Ava gets an allowance every week for chores she does. We check each chore off on a daily basis and at the end of the week Ava gets paid for doing these chores. Ava has three jars – 1 labeled SAVINGS, 1 GIVE AWAY and the other SPENDING. Upon getting paid, Ava first puts some of the money in the GIVE AWAY container, then SAVINGS and finally SPENDING (she knows the correct order). I feel that by doing this she will continue this practice later in life.

If Ava sees something at the store that she wants (now that she is 5 this seems to happen more and more) Tracy and I tell her we have to go home and look in her SPENDING jar to see if she enough to buy it. We use her SAVINGS jar to save up for items that might cost a little more money. Ava has used the money in her GIVE AWAY jar to buy a present for a student at my school who lost her father and for a canned food drive at our church.

A few months ago she said something that made me so happy. After putting money into each container she said that she had enough money in her SPENDING and SAVINGS containers and wanted to get more in her GIVE AWAY so she could buy a ball for her 2 year-old sister, Ella. I was so proud of her. She is now of the age that she has started to notice that some of her friends have more materialistic things than she does. We explain as best we can to her why this is so but it definitely made me feel good to hear her say that she wanted more money to give something away rather than buy for herself.

I was actually just featured on Fox Atlanta’s morning show Good Day Xtra discussing this very topic. Here is the link (I am on about 50 seconds into the video):

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/Teaching_Kids_Money_Sense_091509

I thought you might enjoy Ms. Alberty. Thanks so much and have a great evening!

Sincerely,
Danny Kofke
How To Survive (and perhaps thrive) On A Teacher’s Salary
http://www.dannykofke.blogspot.com
Kofketd@windstream.net
706-824-0286
http://www.tatepublishing.com/bookstore/search.php?search=kofke