Financial Literacy for Kids: Teaching Teens About Money

Welcome to The Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life with Money video series. My name is Stacey Powell, and if you’re ready not just to know better but do better with your money, then you’ve come to the right place.

So lately we’ve been creating videos about our relationship with money. Today, we’re talking about teenagers and their relationship with money and how we can have an impact on it.

I have long been a proponent of “money date night”. It’s what I did to help myself pull myself out of the horrid financial mess I was in years ago. My last video talked about couples having money “date night”. So today we’re going to talk about this thing that I started doing with my daughter when she was a teenager called “teenage money date night”.

When she was young – I was in the midst of my financial nightmare – and because of that, I think I probably gave her a lot of mixed messages and wasn’t a great teacher about money.

By the time she became a teenager, I had come quite a long way in my own learning and doing. I felt like I had a lot of time, which I needed to make up for.

So we started doing teenage money date night. Part of it was to make up, and part of it was because I was writing a book and I wanted to test things out on her to see how they would work.

So we would get gelato, go to a coffee shop, and have teenage money date nights. I was honest. The dates weren’t all sunshine and roses. There were tears at some of them. But we did it. We created this conversation. I did my best to be non-judgmental about her financial decisions. I did my best to teach, but not lecture her. I did my best to listen to her fears and say, “Yeah, I have those fears,” and I did my best not to sound like a know-it-all even though I know a lot about money.

Here’s how I did it. I was honest with her about the mistakes that I’ve made. It became more of a joint effort than me saying, “This is how you should take care of your money, and you aren’t doing this.”

Can you think about a time when you were teaching your kid to ride their bike and took the training wheels off their bike? They probably fell once, twice, maybe more. Did we yell at our little kids when they fell off their bike? Did we look disappointed? Did we try to act like we weren’t disappointed, but they could see through the fact that we were?

When it comes to money, we want so badly for our kids not to suffer the same things we suffered. So our judgment sometimes comes through, even if we’re trying not to show them. I think that’s one of the really important things about teaching your teenager about money.

Teenage date night changed a lot for my daughter and her money. I like to look at things still with training wheels. I have this deal with my daughter. She’s 21 right now, and I have what I call “training wheel savings” for her. I require her to give me a certain amount of money every month, and I put it in a separate savings account. It’s her money, but she doesn’t have control over it. I'll tell you what. Every time something goes wrong with her car, she’s so grateful for having those training wheels.

So when you think about your kids, no matter what age they are – she lets me call it “teenage money date night” even though she’s no longer a teenager. Think about what kind of things you could do to help your kids have a smoother path than maybe you had with money.

If you would like to talk about this more, come on over to our Facebook group Team Do Better. You’re welcome to ask me questions there, and I will answer, and everybody else will appreciate watching as well. Sign up for our newsletter at TheFinanceGym.com or subscribe to these videos right here. Now, have a talk with your teenager.

#1 Money Rule for Couples: You Must Play Together to Stay Together

Welcome to The Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life with Money video series. My name is Stacey Powell, and if you’re ready not just to know better, but do better with your money, then you’ve come to the right place.

Lately, we’ve been talking about our relationship with money and how it impacts our financial life. Today, we’re going to be talking about one of my favorite pieces of advice for couples, and that is to have monthly money date night.

I don’t care if you’ve been married for 50 years, if you’re a newlywed or if you’re thinking about getting married. Having a money date night every month can make a huge impact on your financial life.

Here are a couple of reasons why:

1. The only time you talk about it is when you’re trying to solve a problem, a big enough problem that requires the both of you to talk about it. It’s usually frustrating, stressful, ugly. So that’s your framework for how you show up to any conversation about money because most of your conversations are kind of icky, and frustrating without any simple solutions.

If you consistently talk to your significant other about money, your goals, and your dreams, you’re laying a framework in your head that that’s your money conversations are good. Not just icky stuff.

Then when the icky stuff happens, you’re much better equipped with a shared language and know how to work together. So that’s reason number one.

2.  It’s a stereotype, but I think it’s a true stereotype. In most couples, you’ve got the person that loves spreadsheets, loves accounting software, loves all that stuff and figuring out. Then you’ve got this person over here who wants absolutely nothing to do with any of it and is so happy that the other person is going to do it all. So there is one person making the vast majority of the decisions and actions around your money. While that might be convenient, it isn’t best. Here’s why.

I tell my clients all the time. Imagine I’m your accountant. I’m going to give you a ton of advice. I hope you’re going to take most of it. But I also hope you’re not going to take all of it because my framework – I’m conservative. I’m not always going to take risks. I’m not always going to go for the quick path. I’m going to spend 6 hours on a spreadsheet when I should have only spent 1 hour on a spreadsheet trying to make a decision. I should have followed my intuition more, right? That’s my framework.

Another person’s framework brings great value to your financial decisions and so bringing your two heads together is actually important and better. You might think you’re not good at money, but that’s not true. That’s the story you tell yourself. You have great value to balancing out your partner.

It’s not the end-all-be-all to fixing your money situation. It’s only part of the equation. So those are my top 2 reasons why it’s really important to have money date night with your honey. Keep your marriage together, going strong, and being fun.

So if you would like to join me and more of these conversations, you can Subscribe to these videos. You can join us over at Team Do Better on Facebook whenever you can come in and talk about money, and you can also sign up for our newsletter at TheFinanceGym.com. So I want you to sign off and schedule your first money date night.

Do You Have a Good Relationship with Money?

Welcome to The Finance Gym Action Plan for a Better Life with Money video series.

My name is Stacey Powell and if you’re ready to not just know better but do better with your money, then you’ve come to the right place.

And I'm really excited about today's video and the next few videos that are rolling out over the next two weeks. They're all about our relationship with money.

I'm an accountant, so I'm a huge believer that you can't just magically change your money mindset, and everything's magically going to be okay, like a lot of guru's say. You've got to do the work. You've got to roll up your sleeves; you've got to actually put money in a savings account. You actually have to pay down your debt. There's all this droll, boring, technical stuff you have to do. But, where I differ from a lot of accountants is that the money mindset piece, I think it's half the equation.

Part of what's wrong with money in this society is that we don't talk about it. I call it the big scary. Oh my gosh, do not make me talk about what's wrong with my money, about my debt. Admit to other people that I'm frustrated. Admit to other people that I've had points in my life that I couldn't put $5 of gas in my tank. We also don't like to brag about our money wins because that's just not done. So we end up not talking about money at all which is a huge mistake.

Back in 2008 when everything came crashing down, it was a horrible time. I know for some of you, it was a really horrible time. You might have lost your house. You might have had some family, friend that lost their house. Everybody knew somebody that was on the brink of losing their house or lost their house.

All of a sudden, keeping up with the Jones … We could see driving down our streets that a bunch of the Jones, there was nothing to keep up with because they were not on solid ground to begin with. They might have had a shiny new car. They might have gone to Europe on vacation. But the truth is, they were underwater in their house, and, unfortunately, lost it. It was a horrible time.

The silver lining? We started talking about real money issues, together. Together with friends, family our nation, the media. And I think there was a lot of benefit from that. It gets us out of our own head and working as a community together.

So my big point of today's video is, talk about your money with your kids, your family, your parents, your friends, your mentors. Get a financial coach. We've got great financial coaches at CreatingAnswers.com. Join a money Mastermind group, which we have at TheFinanceGym.com.

If you really want to impact change in your money find someone to talk to. Join a group. Get a coach. Make a difference with your money. And if you're really, really struggling, and you don't have any money, I have some free stuff to help you too.

Subscribe to these videos below. Come to Facebook we have a group called Team Do Better where we talk about money on a weekly basis, join there; it's free. You can sign up for our free newsletter at TheFinanceGym.com. And whatever you do what I will leave you with is, find somebody to talk to about your money. Don't be scared. It won't kill you, it will help you. Have a great day.