Posts Tagged With 'Money'

Travelling with Children

Posted by Alenka  in Money, Parenting No Comments »
Travelling with Children

Last week, when the children had their holidays, we spent in Tuscany, Italy. We visited all famous cities such as Pisa, Lucca, San Gimignano, Siena and Florence, climbed the towers, drank coffee at the sidewalks, tried wine (not the children:)) in Chianti region and ate a lot of icecream and pasta every day – to the delight of the kids.

I will write another post with the details and photos, for now I want to emphasize a few things, that seem important when travelling with children.

  • It is essential to plan a whole trip in advance.
  • Reserve the hotel in advance. With children you can’t just stop where-ever you want and find some place to sleep. It is harder to find the hotel with (free) family room, or room with more beds (say 4), so do your homework and search the net.
  • Get the children involved in the planning, so they know in advance where they are going, what they can expect, have them find some materials in books (you can get the guides at the local library) and let them express their wishes (they get more excited about a place if they saw a nice photo of it)
  • Read a guide for yourself or search the net for stories and legend about people and places. Children can get more interested and remember the staff easier. We went to Paris a few years ago and my younger daughter still remembers the story about Maria-Antoinette, how she lived and how she was decapitated.
  • Prepare enough games and activities for the driving part of the trip. Children get easily bored and when you drive for a few hours, they get annoyed and start to fight. Also make enough rest-stops.
  • Limit the visits to the museums and (especially) churches to the minimum. Find theme parks (like Pinnochio museum in Collodi) or museums with interactive exhibits, so the children can touch, try, make things do something…
  • Plan enough time for rest and play (my daughters are 9 and 12 and they enjoyed the children playgrounds as much as would smaller kids, and when there was none around, they played catching).
  • Always have at hand enough to eat and drink, otherwise you can spend a fortune at every ice-cream parlor, market or a shop.
  • I give the children some money (like 10 or 15 EUR) so they can buy souvenirs or postcards or whatever they wish, so they don’t drive me crazy begging for all kinds of staff they see at the stands (which are plenty around the sights). They can also bring their own saved money, if they want.
  • With older children you can prepare budget for the trip and let them journal all the expenses during the trip, divided into categories (food, drinks, tickets, hotels, gas…). We did it usually at the end of the day, remembering where we was and writing the numbers down. The children then summed up the amounts for the day and for the trip so far.

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4 little piggybanks

Posted by Alenka  in Money No Comments »
4 little piggybanks

When teaching children about money, it is one of the priorities to teach them how to allocate the money that they get. It can be the money they found on the street, money they get from parents, grandparents and aunts or money earned for small services for others -it is important to stick to the agreed rules.

The common advice is to get them 3 or 4 piggybanks to easily divide the money. But first you have to agree on the percentages to give to each cause. Easy rule of the thumb is 30%-30%-30%-10% (or one third if you have 3 piggybanks). I prefer going for the four, because I found out that my children were confused when they have money for savings and investments together. They don’t understand very clearly what investments are and why would they need savings, when they have parents to provide them for everything:) Or perhaps decide on the amounts as sometimes it is difficult to divide the money (or you will end up collecting little coins just to get the amounts right). For example: at first I gave my daugter 15 EUR allowance, but when dividing, it was really annoying searching for quarters, so I decided to increase her allowance (for educational purposes) to 17 EUR, so she can divide her money to 5-5-5-2 EUR to each piggybank.

Encourage the child to allocate his/her money to

  1. savings (for something bigger – like PSP, computer, bike)
  2. investments (to find later on somthing that money will work for them)
  3. charity/donations
  4. spending

Of course, you should not stick to this piggybanks as an only mean of holding money. As soon there is some money in the piggybanks, discuss different money and investing options with your child. Go to the bank and open an investing account or go get them a saving account. Help them give the money to the charities, not only physically but perhaps you can wire some money accross the world.

I made my children little booklets to track all the transactions they made with the money. I even pay them the interests on the amount they are saving (until we take the money to the bank).

Use every opportunity you can to teach your child about money, how you get it, what you can use it for, how it is handled in the banks, stores…

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Allowance – to give or not to give?

Posted by Alenka  in Money No Comments »

Giving your child an allowance is a good way to teach him or her about receiving and managing money.

When determining the amount of allowance for your child, consider the child’s age. On average the majority of American kids start receiving a weekly allowance around 5 – 7 years old, with a weekly amount of $1.00 for every year of age, until 16 when they start dating and driving when the amount is normally increased.

Allowances are not tied to completing chores, but are given as a way for kids to learn the value of money, budgeting, saving and spending.

You may want to encourage kids to put away a portion for charity and another portion for savings. If so, let them choose where to donate the money. It may be a cause that a child can relate to in some way, like an animal shelter or a group that helps sick kids. If some of the allowance goes to savings, consider setting up an account at a local bank. This way, your child can keep track of the money.

t’s a good to have them use it for discretionary things, not essential purchases such as food or clothing. This lets kids make buying decisions — and mistakes — without dire consequences.

There are a few don’ts you should pay attentions to:
- do not tie the money to the chores
- do not withold the money for misbehaviour
- do not take control of the money

(to read complete article, click here)

If you would like more info on this topic, I highly recommend Amanda van der Gulik’s new book Allowance Secrets. Amanda’s writing is a very helpful guide for parents to finally figure out whether we should be giving our children an allowance or not as a tool for teaching them about money. One of the key issues that I know many parents are trying to negotiate is whether children should be given an allowance or if they should earn their own money, or both.

To get you FREE COPY, click here.


Teach Your Children About Money


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To the Clown Doctors!

Posted by Alenka  in Money No Comments »

When teaching my children to manage money, I encourage them to save 10% of all the money they get for the charity. Then we talk about different possibilities.

They are very fond of the animals, so their first choice is giving to local animal shelters.

When we are going to buy the food for our bunnies, they give all the pennies, we are collecting in a special jar, to collection box in the store.

We also donate clothes, toys and school supplies.

I donate blood regularly and we talk about it a lot.

We were at the fair yesterday and there were the clown doctors, promoting their activities at the children hospitals. Anja (my oldest) immediately noticed they were selling red noses and of course I bought 2 of them. They make all kind of faces with them and when we came home, Anja gave me her money for the noses. She said she wants to give her charity money for the Clown Doctors. Boy, I was proud. It was actually the first time she volunteers to give money by herself without me encouraging it.

Encouraging charitable action benefits the children themselves. It:

  • Helps teach empathy
  • Shows children that their actions can have a positive impact
  • Helps connect children to their (local, national, or international) community
  • Helps children better understand and cope with unpleasant events

Do you encourage your child to give some money to the charity? Does he/she volunteers in different charitable actions?

I highly recommend these books to help you raise giving children:

And of course, consider making a donation to the Clown doctors:

clown_doctors

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Playing money games with kids

Posted by Alenka  in Money No Comments »
Playing money games with kids

 

If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things. (Norman Douglas)

piggy

 

When talking about money, it is never too early to begin teaching your child.

There are quite a number of board and online games available nowadays,  from Monopoly, Game of Life to various counting and making change games.

How about some “crazy money” games, when you actually pay your kids to not do something. It’s all about deferred gratification – puting off pleasure in order to acomplish something. It’s been proven by the Stanford University test, that kids who were able to wait for their treats were more dependable and well-adjusted as adults.

Try it, make it work for you, and mostly, have fun!

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