Money shmoney and kiddy shmiddies.

Trivial response to an Age blah. I mean blog!

You will never regret teaching your kids how to save, pay bills and have money left over for nice things. Why? Ask any parent of a teenager who doesn't have those skills....

I negotiate pocket money with my 11yo. A portion goes straight to his personal account and he gets the rest as cash. 10% of any other money he gets also goes into his bank account. The only real rule is that I won't buy him junk food, toy weapons or video games, he uses his own money for that (right now he is hoarding cash to save for an X-Box 360). Meanwhile he gets to see his bank savings grow via the "Pay Yourself First" method of saving. You should have seen his face the first time he was paid interest - "The bank GAVE me money, just for keeping my money with them? WOW." I tell him this money is for later, for a gap year, or a car or whatever.

My parents told me nothing about money when I was growing up, so I make up for it now with spreadsheets, 13 bank accounts (each with a different purpose) and a system of automatic debits so complex that if I die without writing an instruction book it will take years to figure out what I was doing... Perhaps I over reacted...

You won't regret teaching your kids to save. Teaching them while they're in nappies is probably a bit early to my mind. Though when they were in nappies, and I was a broke single mum, I saved for them anyway using a rather quaint rule:

Every payday put away the same amount of cents as they are days old.

This was a TINY amount but I stuck it in a reward saver and didn't touch it. I used internet banking for the transaction so I didn't have to embarrass myself at the teller with the trivial amounts I was transferring... and of course, because the amounts were trivial, they were easy to let go of each week. My son is now eleven, the weekly payments are no longer as trivial (but thankfully I'm no longer as broke), and what started as a rather embarrassing award saver with less than one hundred dollars in it has grown to a cool seven grand in a high interest term deposit - all by putting away a few dollars a week and letting compound interest work its magic. That money is dipped into occasionally to get him special stuff, like the musical instrument of his choice and school camps. Now it's being used as part of a house deposit so I guess I'll have to give him part ownership of the house? Hmmm. Might be going a bit too far...

Saving is ace, the rewards are numerous and you don't need a massive paycheck to get started. The key is to put it away and don't touch it, even if it's as little as $2 on a regular basis. Teach your kids how, they will thank you later when they buy their x-box, or designer shoes, get a better car, go overseas.... I wish someone had taught me.

Mummy is writing letters to MPs again. Bad Mummy.

Bad Mummy because I should be reading up on dopamine and brains. Oh well.

http://emervents.blogspot.com/2009/04/letter-to-ministers-re-maternity.html


.