Financial Literacy

As part of Financial Literacy Month (#FLM2018), I’m featuring guest posts and interviews on the topic all month-long. Please welcome Carl, from 1500 Days to discuss kids and money.

My youngest daughter is afraid of money, at least in the form of coins. If she notices a quarter on the ground, she’ll go out of her way to keep a safe distance. I’m not sure where this irrational fear comes from (Not me! I love money!), but she won’t go near buttons either. We had to ask her school to make an exception to the dress code because she won’t go near a shirt with buttons. She is not a fan of small, round objects.

My older daughter loves money. She has piggy dinosaur banks that she stores it in:

And once Older Daughter has money, she’s incredibly careful about spending it. We give her free will to spend her money on whatever she wants; she earned it after all. However, more often than not, she’ll go home from the store empty-handed. Older Daughter has always been this way.

Money fearing Younger Daughter isn’t the same. If she has dollars (No coins!), she’ll spend freely.

I think that my wife and I have done a good job of raising them equally, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll grow up with the same values. We nurture them the same, but nature has its say too. Our children are vastly different people.

I want my daughters to be many things, but this post is about money, so let’s focus on that. Instilling good financial values in children isn’t easy.

How should I go about teaching them about money?

When is a good time to start?

What is the public school’s responsibility in financial education?

How do you teach an 8-year-old that saving is important?

How do I get through to my girls’ different personalities?

Before I get to that, let’s take a trip down memory lane.

Read More

Brian Brandow

Brian is a Dad, husband, and an IT professional by trade. A Personal Finance Blogger since 2013. Who, with his family, has successfully paid off over $100K worth of consumer debt. Now that Brian is debt-free, his mission is to help his three children prepare for their financial lives and educate others to achieved financial success. Brian is involved in his local community. As a Financial Committee Chair with the Board of Education of his local school district, he has helped successfully launch a K-12 financial literacy program in a six thousand student district.

brianbrandow.com/

Each year April is dedicated to Financial Literacy Month here in the United States. It has been officially recognized since 2003. Fifteen years into the initiative how are we doing? Well, according to a recent national financial literacy test conducted in 2017 by the National Financial Educators Council only 48% of the 17,000 participants received a passing grade. Seven in 10 seniors (69%) who graduated from public and nonprofit colleges in 2014 had student loan debt, with an average of $28,950 per borrower.

I could share various data points from a number of sources all day, to make the point that American’s as a whole lack financial education. The real question is how did we get to this point? Currently, only seventeen states require students to take a high school course in personal finances, and only twenty to take a course in economics. Of the seventeen schools that require the course, only five provide it as a stand-alone class.

Data shows that those students in the seventeen states where a personal finance course was required display positive financial behaviors, including being more likely to save, pay credit cards in full each month, and manage money better later in life.

So if data shows we are behind in our financial education, and financial education, in fact, does positively impact individuals, why aren’t we doing more of it?

Read More

Brian Brandow

Brian is a Dad, husband, and an IT professional by trade. A Personal Finance Blogger since 2013. Who, with his family, has successfully paid off over $100K worth of consumer debt. Now that Brian is debt-free, his mission is to help his three children prepare for their financial lives and educate others to achieved financial success. Brian is involved in his local community. As a Financial Committee Chair with the Board of Education of his local school district, he has helped successfully launch a K-12 financial literacy program in a six thousand student district.

brianbrandow.com/

I’m not ashamed to admit that I was afraid to deal with our money problems head-on before our rock bottom moment that put our family on a path to debt freedom. My fear was real. I was concerned about what others might think, that we’re not supposed to talk about our money openly, and most fearful that we couldn’t survive without a credit card safety net.

I knew for several years leading up to maxing our five credit cards that we needed to make a change in our money behavior, but we pressed on, overspending, head in the sand because we were afraid to do something different. That fear kept us in our bad habit cycle because it was comfortable, it required little effort, and honestly, we were not ready for a change yet.

So when I receive reader emails asking for help, I understand what an essential first step it is to overcome that fear. I’ve been there. What I can’t quite figure out, is why my replies often go unanswered. I can only assume, like us they just are not ready yet. But you know what they say about assuming.

Read More

Brian Brandow

Brian is a Dad, husband, and an IT professional by trade. A Personal Finance Blogger since 2013. Who, with his family, has successfully paid off over $100K worth of consumer debt. Now that Brian is debt-free, his mission is to help his three children prepare for their financial lives and educate others to achieved financial success. Brian is involved in his local community. As a Financial Committee Chair with the Board of Education of his local school district, he has helped successfully launch a K-12 financial literacy program in a six thousand student district.

brianbrandow.com/

I’m sure there is some report somewhere that captures the spending habits of teenagers, but after setting up bank accounts and debit cards for our three teenagers early this year I had to look not farther than our online statements.

Now their accounts have only been open a little over four months so this will be far from a scientific study, but will shed some insight on what at least our teenagers are spending their money on this summer.

It’s a good chance for us to review their choices and help guide them. As I’m sure others reading this with teenagers understand that teenagers know everything and are very temperamental. They need to be handled gently at all times.  I kid, I kid, they know we mean well, they just don’t like to hear it.

The Gory Details

We have three teenagers, seventeen-year-old twins (boy-girl) and a fourteen-year-old son. Now it’s a bit early to break down the numbers, so I just give you the categories at a high-level. Here’s how their spending has broken down:

Read More

Brian Brandow

Brian is a Dad, husband, and an IT professional by trade. A Personal Finance Blogger since 2013. Who, with his family, has successfully paid off over $100K worth of consumer debt. Now that Brian is debt-free, his mission is to help his three children prepare for their financial lives and educate others to achieved financial success. Brian is involved in his local community. As a Financial Committee Chair with the Board of Education of his local school district, he has helped successfully launch a K-12 financial literacy program in a six thousand student district.

brianbrandow.com/

I recently had the opportunity to review the book Above Average Finance: Investment Strategies to Put You Ahead of the Rest by James Pollard. You may recognize James. He is the founder of PersonalFinanceGenius.com. James provided me with a PDF copy of the book for my review.

Read More

Brian Brandow

Brian is a Dad, husband, and an IT professional by trade. A Personal Finance Blogger since 2013. Who, with his family, has successfully paid off over $100K worth of consumer debt. Now that Brian is debt-free, his mission is to help his three children prepare for their financial lives and educate others to achieved financial success. Brian is involved in his local community. As a Financial Committee Chair with the Board of Education of his local school district, he has helped successfully launch a K-12 financial literacy program in a six thousand student district.

brianbrandow.com/