Money Management Tools for Kids | How (and WHAT) to teach your kids about MONEY 💵

Name: Money Management Tools for Kids | How (and WHAT) to teach your kids about MONEY 💵 | Open Video
Uploaded: 2024-06-19T01:26:49+00:00
Duration: 19 min 47 s

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Hey guys, welcome to today's video. Today we are talking about money management and how to teach it to your kids
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I'll be sharing the tools that I've used over the years to do this and some tips to help you tackle this topic effectively in your home and homeschool
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Before we get started, let me give a brief intro in case you're new here. I'm Sarah. I'm a homeschool mom to four kids ranging from ages five to 12
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on this channel I love sharing all things homeschooling, parenting, my faith, and even a little bit of fitness as that's one of my passions. I'm really glad you're here. This video is part of a collaboration hosted by Stephanie from Schulte's Sweeties and what that means is that a bunch of us homeschool mom, YouTubers are coming together and talking about the same topic today and I'll be linking to a playlist where you can find all of these videos. Definitely go check some of them out once you're done watching here. I will be doing that because I have
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love learning tips and tricks from other moms and I always get some new ideas from videos like
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these. Okay, so money management. Let's go there. I like talking about this topic actually. So it was
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only about six years ago that I read the book Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey. If you are
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looking for a money management strategy, looking to get out of debt or how to create a budget
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I highly recommend this book. I wish I would have read it sooner. But I read it at the time because
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I was struggling. My husband and I had been married for about 12 years already and had three of our
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kids and life seemed to be going pretty well, but we didn't have a good handle on our money. And by
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that I mean, like so many people, we lived on loans and credit cards. We thought that was normal
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That debt was a normal part of life. We didn't know how to truly budget effectively and successfully
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We never had a plan for our money or paid as much attention to it as we should have. With all
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the craziness of life at the time. We never paid much attention to how much of our money was
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being eaten away by interest rates. And we really thought we were doing okay since we always paid
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all of our bills on time. I cringe now thinking about how foolish we were and how much money
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we wasted by simply not taking the time to learn how to spend and budget effectively. And
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Josh and I vowed to teach our kids to be better than us in this area and help them learn from our
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mistakes. I guess that's the beauty in going through things like this, right? In learning the hard way
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hopefully we can pass on some decent knowledge to our kids in this area and probably miss something
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else or mess something else up, but this, this we've got covered. I am really thankful for
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the opportunity to teach important life skills like this in our homeschool. It's never too late to
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learn, but it's even better when we can get our kids started early on with learning financial
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responsibility. Okay, so after reading the Dave Ramsey book, let me just give you a Cliffs note
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version of some of the things that Josh and I changed pretty much immediately. First, we created a budget
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meaning we actually sat down and looked at our income versus expenses, and we gave every dollar a
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place to go. There are so many budgeting tools available, but we started with, and we still use
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a program called every dollar to help us budget and balance our bank account each month. I don't know
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why we didn't start doing this sooner. We just didn't know. This program is amazing for budgeting, and I
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highly recommend it. There is a free version, but I do pay for the premium account because it will
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automatically pull in all transactions that you make so you can easily categorize them. There are
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probably lots of other tools that do this, but we've been using this one for years now and I love
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it, so I always recommend it. So anyway, we began following the baby steps, as they're called in the book
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We started a small savings account and then began chipping away at our debt. Next, we literally
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got rid of all of our credit cards, which was honestly really scary. We relied on credit way too much
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which is a big part of the problem. We actually locked them up in one of our safe boxes and stopped
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spending on them. It was hard to just get rid of them completely right away. So we locked them up
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stopped spending. And once we paid each one off, we canceled them and ended up cutting them up
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getting rid of them. Honestly, we haven't looked back. And I know that there are some benefits to
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some credit cards like rewards or things like that. But for now, we just simply do not use them at all
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It just wasn't good for us. And finally, the other thing we changed is we started giving our kids an
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allowance. We realized that we needed to do better for our kids and we needed to teach them how to manage
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money. You can't do that if you don't have money. So we started with an allowance. You guys know we do
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assign weekly chores to our kids. I have an entire video about our chore charts and chore system that
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you can check out, but we don't strictly tie chores to their allowance. We do you. We do you know, we do assign weekly chores to
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their allowance We really wanted to make sure that they were getting a certain amount of money on a regular basis so they could practice being responsible with it That being said they do know that if they don contribute and do their chores one of the consequences may be losing their allowance But we don assign a certain amount
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of money to each chore or anything like that. Okay, next, I want to share a few things that
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based on what Josh and I have learned, we want to make sure we teach our kids about money
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And then I'm going to share some helpful resources that I have used and do use to do this
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Okay, the first thing we want our kids to learn. Don't spend money you don't have
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We know that being in debt is no fun. Our kids know that what they have in their spending fund is what they have to spend, period
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If you don't have the money, you can't buy what you want. When they pout about this, I will ask them, why don't you see what the cashier at the store thinks
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Let's take that toy, video game, book, whatever, up to the counter and see if you can pay for it with the money you have
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They quickly get the point that it doesn't work that way. There have been occasions when they've asked to borrow money from a sibling and tell them that they will pay them back
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And we've used these opportunities to talk to them about interest and how when you borrow money, you often end up owing back more than what you borrowed
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And we have let them learn the hard way on this one. It's definitely hard for them to swallow when they get their next allowance
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And then they have to hand it right over to a sibling to pay them back for something that they bought a month ago
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But I'd definitely rather have them learn these lessons while the price to pay is still small
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All right. The second thing we want to teach our kids is to have a plan for every penny
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In other words, create a budget. This isn't necessarily something we're focusing on right now as our kids are still young
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but the other habits we're putting into place are good building blocks for this. I didn't have many conversations about money with my parents growing up
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Maybe this is not normal, but I could not have told you how much money they made at their jobs
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what their budget looked like or how they manage their money. My husband and I both agree that we want
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a different finance culture for our family. Budgeting is so important because if you don't plan
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for where your money should go, it's easy to lose track of it and slip into poor habits. Like I said
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our kids are still a little bit on the young side for learning this skill. They don't really have
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their own expenses right now other than a toy or a game here or there that they want to buy
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but pretty soon, especially as my oldest son gets to be driving age within the next couple of years
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we want to start at least showing them how we budget each month
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So we want to actually have them sit down with us as we create our monthly budget
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Getting them familiar with the process will be an important first step before they eventually have to do it on their own
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For now, we teach our kids to sort all incoming money into three different funds, spending, savings, and giving
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And I'll talk more in a few minutes about some of the tools I used to do this. Okay, third thing we want to teach our kids is to think twice
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This one can be hard. Money tends to burn holes in my kids' pockets
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The minute my 10-year-old daughter has spending money, she wants to look for something to buy
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Impulse bias can be really hard to resist, and it's important that we practice strengthening
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those weighting muscles. I'm working hard to teach my kids that just because you have money does not mean that you
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need to spend it right away. there is way too much instant gratification these days. If there's something that you really think
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you have to have, sit on it for a day and see if the urge is still there tomorrow. A lot of times
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it's not. And that leads me to my next piece of advice for my kids. I want them to learn to
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comparison shop. There are many options these days for where you can purchase something, way too many
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most of the time. But in relation to taking time to think about purchases, we want our kids to know
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that you don't always have to buy something from the first place that you look. estaba as they get older and start making more important choices and more important purchases
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We'll teach them to take time to research the best options and prices for what they're going to spend their money on
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Sometimes the difference is small, but every little penny adds up. Okay, lesson number five that we want to teach our kids is to build an emergency fund
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Yes, this is another one of those things that our little ones probably don't need to worry about yet
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But when they get older, we should teach our kids the importance of this
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Josh and I didn't have an emergency fund for the longest time, hence the reliance on credit cards and loads of other problems
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But this has been a lifesaver for us now many times the past couple of years
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It can be hard to let extra money sit in case of an emergency, but the truth is you never know what might happen that you'll need extra cash
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If you make the choice to get out of debt and get rid of your credit cards, especially, you'll want at least a small fund built up in the beginning
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and you can gradually add to it along the way until you get to where you want it to be
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We want to teach our kids to prepare for the curveballs life might throw at them so they
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aren't caught off guard and they don't have to worry all the time about not having money if
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something happens Finally we want to teach our kids to be generous with what they have All of the money that we have everything that we have is a gift from the Lord I want my kids to understand this at a young age and practice setting aside some of all the money they receive for giving to others and doing good
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We are to be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us, and that includes giving to others
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That means it's important for us as parents to set a good example for our kids, let them see us doing this, and then help them set aside some of their own money to give
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and show them opportunities where they can do this. Okay, so now let's talk about some of the tools
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I have used over the years to teach my kids about money. And mainly at their ages, we are focusing on three things right now
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We're focusing on saving. So how to save their money for goals or big purchases
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giving, and spending wisely. Right after I had finished the Dave Ramsey book
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and Josh and I had started on the baby steps, we attended our very first
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teach them diligently homeschool convention. Well, while we were there, Ramsey's Solutions
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actually had a boo, and had some books and resources that we purchased and started using right away. So these books
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were part of the financial piece junior kit that we bought. It came with these, there's six books
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here, and it also came with a chore chart, magnetic chore chart, and a money bank. It also came
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with some envelopes for giving, saving, and spending. Dave Ramsey is big on the cash and
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envelope system, but we use those so much and just wore them out, so I don't have those to show you
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anymore. But it came with, like I said, this chore chart. We don't really use this. As I said
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you guys know, we kind of do our own thing with chores, but there are magnets that represent different
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chores. And it's very sturdy, magnetic. You can stick it on the fridge. And then you can choose
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which chores that you want to do and put them here or you could write in your own chore. There was also a
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little marker that came with this and an activity book. But with this one, they have obviously the
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dates here and then you could assign your chores and then a dollar amount per chore and there's a
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spot for your kids to write down what they're saving for, how much it costs, and totals
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where they're going to give, this week's commission, all sorts of things. So it is a nice
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chore chart if this is something that you want to do where you want to assign a certain amount per
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chore and they can check off during the week as they do it. So that came in the kit that we bought
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Like I said, we haven't used it too much. And then this little piggy bang, this has actually separated inside
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So there's three different slots for spending, giving, and saving. We used this for a little while, but then we just started using the envelopes because they were
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more portable and we could carry them around with us. When, you know, they had the money in here, it was just harder if we were out and they wanted
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to spend or give or something like that. We didn't have it with us. So, but again, you might like something like this
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I don't know if they sell these anymore. It came with the kit when we bought it, but, you know, we did use it for just a little while
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and then it didn't really fit our needs as much as we thought it would. But the books, I really love
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You know, this, the kit overall was a great way for us to begin having conversations with our kids about money
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It is a little pricey. I looked online on Amazon, they do sell the books, and I think it comes with the chore chart
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It's a little pricey, but I looked at it as an investment, and it really has been worthwhile for us
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These books all teach a different concept about money management. So like this one is Junior Discovers Giving, Junior Discovers Debt, Junior Discovers Savings, Junior
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Discovers Integrity, Junior Discovers Spending, and Junior Discovers Work. So they all just have great lessons in them
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They're easy to read, fun to look at. The kids read them over and over again
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We've read them out loud. And it's just great to have a resource like this to kind of anchor our lessons about money
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on give us kind of a common language and things to talk about. So I highly recommend this either
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you know, whether that's the kit or looking into books like this. I will leave a link in the
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description to the kit on Amazon. Like I said, I don't think it comes with the bank, but you can
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check it out if you were interested in the books. Okay, after my girls got a little older
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and we only had one set of the little envelopes from the Dave Ramsey kit, I started looking
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at different options for wallets for them. And I found these wallets
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on Etsy years ago. I will have to see if I can find the same shop and link to it for you
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guys, but we love these wallets and my kids use them today for any cash they receive. So they are
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I don't know, if you're if you're handy, you could probably make them too, but they have
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Velcro on them and when you open them up, maybe you've seen something like this, but they just
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have a little spot, a little pocket inside for giving, saving, spending, and then there
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is a little zipper pouch at the top where you can keep coins
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and things So these are fantastic To help my kids keep their different little funds separate we do a percentage of each so right now they have to put a minimum of 10 of what they get in giving and a minimum of 10 in savings they sometimes choose to do more
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and we are probably going to increase the savings part a little bit I think 10% is kind of low
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I do remember as a kid having to always put 50% of any money I received into savings and I didn't like it but
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looking back, it was a good thing. And yes, these wallets are kind of an honor system, right
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Because they could take money out of giving or savings and put it in spending at any time. And
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I probably wouldn't know about it. But because we are having those conversations about the
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importance of those things, they've been effective for us. The next thing I'm going to show you
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are these money log books that I got from Amazon. I don't know where the other one is right now
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I didn't ask my daughter for it. But I got one for each of my older three kids. They all have
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different covers, but basically these help them keep track of any money that is still in the bank
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So let me just show you the inside here. It's just basically a balance sheet, right? So they've
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got a space for their starting balance, the date, description, money spent, money received
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and then they're balanced. So it's just a little logbook. This one is the same. This one is my
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son's. It just looks a little bit different inside, but the same basic pages. Just basically a logbook
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where they keep track of their money. Honestly, when we first began giving them an allowance
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I pulled cash out of the bank each week and made sure to break it down correctly so it could go
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into their different funds. But now that they're older, many of the purchases they want to make
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are online. So having cash wasn't as convenient for them or for us. So these books are to help
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them keep track of the money that is in the bank, not necessarily their cash, which they keep in their
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wallet. Basically, they record their allowance in here each month. We give them a certain amount each
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month for their allowance and they have to, they have the entire month to budget that and use
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how they want to, and I don't pull cash anymore. This is maybe going to sound confusing
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but I'll try to explain how I do it. In every dollar, our budgeting program, you can set up
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funds for anything you want to. Basically, different parts of your budget, so you can assign where
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you want to allocate every dollar that's coming in. So in there, I have a section set up for my
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kids money. I have a section for Luke's spending, Luke's saving, Luke's giving, and then a section for
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Carly's spending, Carly's saving, Carly's giving, and so on with all my kids. Each month, I split their
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allowance money into each of those funds. In these books here, my kids know how much they get to
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spend each month, so this is what they track in here. If they need to pull money for giving, I can look
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it up in the program and see how much is in there. And savings, they don't touch. That's
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that's for a long-term savings. Now, is this the best way to do this? I don't know, but it works for us
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right now. When my kids are older, like get a job older, we plan on actually creating their own
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every dollar account for them to use so they can begin building and practicing a budget with
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their money. And at that point, we'll probably start creating separate bank accounts and things
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like that for them. I hope that all makes sense. I'm happy to answer any questions at all about
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how we do this. And I will also add that we did for a while have some of those kid debit
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cards we used green light but there are a few different options out there they were okay and there
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were some benefits but we had to pay a monthly fee to use them and if the kids needed cash they couldn't
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access it very easily plus they were finding that some of the things they wanted to buy online
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wouldn't accept the cards for some reason so it got really frustrating so we canceled those and just
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started what we're doing now which has worked much better okay so i think that's pretty much it
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this is what I'm currently using to teach my kids about money habits, budgeting, things like that
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It can be tough to navigate and I know money can be tough to talk about sometimes
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So I'd encourage you to begin having conversations with your kids and teaching them about these things
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Teach them that it's good to have money conversations and to be good stewards about what God has given us
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Because it's all his and what we do with it, how we use our money can either glorify him or glorify ourselves
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so we want to learn to be wise with it. If you have any questions at all, I'd love to hear them in the comments, or if you have
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anything that you use to teach your kids about money, I want to hear it. Don't forget to check out the playlist for the collaboration so you can see what the other
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moms have to say about this as well and see the tips and tools that they use
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I can't wait to do that myself. And please like this video if you found it helpful at all
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Give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to my channel if you enjoy content like this. I really appreciate having you here and hope that this was valuable to you
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Thanks so much for watching. I will see you next time

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