In 1999, my husband Michael and I started Money Savvy Generation to help teach kids about money – starting in our daughter Allison’s first grade classroom. Now in her twenties, Allison is putting into practice many of the money tips I shared with her growing up.  I asked her what advice and tools she values most now as a working adult.  Here is her response – in her words – and a link to a video with my top 5 money tips to help you teach your own kids about money.  Enjoy!

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My friend Farnoosh Torabi forwarded a great testimonial from a mom who was trying to find a way to introduce allowance to her 8 year old daughter. Here’s how she tackled it using our Money Savvy Pig bank – and how it inspired her daughter. Enjoy!

My daughter is 8 and keeps asking about allowance but we have not seemed to have really gotten serious about it. I looked around for apps and didn’t find anything I liked that well, she doesn’t have personal electronic devices yet so I didn’t really have a desire to connect her to somehow electronically track a cash balance or something. So we went old school with something that’s been on my radar before that’s a recommended tool for teaching kids about money management (Money Savvy Pig – Pink) Continue reading

As parents, we often try to provide all we can so our children – especially teens – have all they need to succeed.  But sometimes in the process, we create a situation we did not anticipate – teens taking our money for granted.  A few years ago, I offered some tips to a family struggling with this specific challenge on the Dr. Phil show.  So if you are struggling to find ways to help your teen to not take your money for granted, try these tips to help you and your family:

It’s 8 a.m. and both of my girls are at work.  Allison, my oldest, just graduated from college and is employed full-time at a company that is what I consider “old school”.  “Old school” benefits that include health, dental, vision and a 4% match on 401(k) contributions and a defined benefit pension on top of that. My youngest, a rising junior in college, is at her first job of the day, teaching special education three-year-olds at a summer camp and then will come home and turn around to get to her second job of the day, a hostess at a restaurant where she has worked for the past 4 years.

If you ask them why they work so hard, they will tell you it is because they have to.  And they would be right.  We told them in high school that they would need to cover their wants and needs when they started college.  Continue reading