Money Matters
Ducktale
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Follow Up--your financial legacy
As a follow up to the previous discussion on what kind of financial habits your parents had and passed on to you,it's pretty clear that how our parents handled money affected us, for better or worse. So what are you doing/planning to do to pass on good financial habits to your children? Specific tips or strategies on teaching your children about money/spending/saving/investing? Important lessons for them to learn? So many of my peers have poor financial habits or are not interested in looking at their finances in the long term, and I believe they are passing that on to their kids. I'm interested to know what other MM folks are doing to teach their kids to be responsible with money.
Re: Follow Up--your financial legacy
We would like to be open with our kids about financials. My parents didn't open up to us about money till after I graduated from college, and H's parents didn't until a couple of years ago. So we would like to be open with our children about it. We also would like to teach our children about tithing 10%, and also putting money into savings from each check.
However, we do not want to give allowances. H received one for chores, and I did not. Still to this day he feels as though he should be given something for doing daily tasks. This is something that neither one of us want our kids to experience. We want them to understand thta you don't always get something in return for the things you do.
Lastly we've planned to put money aside for their college, but aren't going to let them know about it until after college. The agreement will be that if they graduate then we will pay for their schooling. If they drop out, then it's on them.
TTC since 1/13 DX:PCOS 5/13 (long, anovulatory cycles)
Clomid 50mg 9/13 = BFP! EDD 6/7/14 M/C 5w6d Found 11/4/13
1/14 PCOS / Gluten Free Diet to hopefully regulate my system.
Chemical Pregnancy 03/14
Surprise BFP 6/14, Beta #1: 126 Beta #2: 340 Stick baby, stick! EDD 2/17/15
Riley Elaine born 2/16/15
TTC 2.0 6/15
Chemical Pregnancy 9/15
Chemical Pregnancy 6/16
BFP 9/16 EDD 6/3/17
Beta #1: 145 Beta #2: 376 Beta #3: 2,225 Beta #4: 4,548
www.5yearstonever.blogspot.com
The college thing actually came from my uncle. That is what he did with his kids, and they had no idea. The oldest partied and dropped out after 2 years and is now paying for his student loans. The youngest focused on his degree and graduated in 4 years, and on his graduation day his dad wrote him a check for the amount of student loans he had.
The allowance thing kind of makes me mad. I will ask H to do something, and he'll ask "what's in it for me?" Um, the satisfaction that you're helping the household run smoothly. Nothing else. Thankfully he notices what he's doing, and will apoligize and do the task. But it's just the mentality he was brought up with that has followed him to his adult years.
TTC since 1/13 DX:PCOS 5/13 (long, anovulatory cycles)
Clomid 50mg 9/13 = BFP! EDD 6/7/14 M/C 5w6d Found 11/4/13
1/14 PCOS / Gluten Free Diet to hopefully regulate my system.
Chemical Pregnancy 03/14
Surprise BFP 6/14, Beta #1: 126 Beta #2: 340 Stick baby, stick! EDD 2/17/15
Riley Elaine born 2/16/15
TTC 2.0 6/15
Chemical Pregnancy 9/15
Chemical Pregnancy 6/16
BFP 9/16 EDD 6/3/17
Beta #1: 145 Beta #2: 376 Beta #3: 2,225 Beta #4: 4,548
www.5yearstonever.blogspot.com
Such good ideas! That is a very interesting thought, about not tying allowance to daily responsibilities. And the idea about having everyone give up something for a vacation is a great idea. These are great lessons.
My biggest thing is I want to be very open about money and finances with my kids, which is different than how I was raised. I want them to know that we keep a budget, and while we can afford to pay our bills and do some fun things, we cannot buy everything. I want them to know the principles of budgetting--if you go over budget in one area, you have to cut back in other areas, etc. I also want to teach them about things like retirement, mortgages, investing, etc. since my parents taught me nothing about these areas.
Something I haven't quite figured out, is that being financially responsible is so important to me, I'm a little worried about teaching our kids to be worried or paranoid about money. I hope to teach them, (somehow), that when you are financially responsible, you can feel free, rather than feeling trapped by bills you can't pay, and that money and budgeting can be a good, happy topic to discuss when you make good choices and plan ahead.
Love: March 2010 Marriage: July 2013 Debt Free: October 2014 TTC: May 2015
One thing I want to implement with my kids is something I just heard of from another mom in my weekly Bible Study. For her kids' birthdays (she has 4) she does have parties for them, but prior to the party she helps them select a charity. For the invites, the child asks his/her guests to make donations to the charity instead of buying him/her a gift.
I think this teaches giving and helping out others, it teaches that it's not all about the child, and it prevents them from becoming too wrapped up in material things.
I do want to do a better job at explaining to my LO that we are sending him to Catholic school so that he gets the best education possible since we live in one of the worse educational areas of our State. It took me going to college after being out of high school for 7 years what having a good educational background can do for you especially when I was seeing a lot of the 18 year olds struggling with even the basic classes.
As for an allowance, I will have no problems giving him an allowance for monthly spending once he is old enough to need the money like when he starts kindergarden. I will also expect him to help around the house and make sure that he knows that the help around the house is not tied to the allowance.