Beyond The Piggy Bank ,Teaching Kids To Manage Money.

Walking through a supermarket my girl spied a sports shirt on sale for $33.00,marked down from $47.00."We'll save $14.00 if we buy this NOW,"she said.She stared at me when I said,"We'll save $33.00 if we don't buy it at all."
Kids absorb lots of messages,values and attitudes from the media and friends.Advertisements whet their appetite for so many things that they don't need.What we ought to do is give them an understanding of the value of money, of 'herds and flocks'.They also sponge up on your example on spending,living,manners and money management.There are compelling reasons to teach them to be money savvy in today's environment and culture.
How do we then teach them?Schools don't teach that.It's up to parents to help their kids into growing up to be responsible,skillful money makers and spenders.The lessons begin now.

1. Pay them a regular allowance.Then teach them in simple doses how to use it and plan spending.Guide them in the relationship between money and shopping.Be open and frank with them about what amount you can afford to give them now and what you expect them to pay for.Guide them to learn about balancing spending and resources.They don't always have to spend for themselves.If the kids want to forego their allowance to put into a family campfire or road trip for example,let it be.They will learn about togetherness as a family instead of being obsessed on themselves or their needs.
2. Save then spend.The first step to managing money is setting some aside.Help them set small personal goals.Encourage them to buy small items first before they go on to bigger bills.Keep their goal of what they want to own visible to them.If they see something they want to buy for e.g. cut out the picture and tape it to a piggy jar where they can see their money 'grow'.It's especially important,so they don't blow away their 'fund'.If they show prudence and show effort to save you may want to consider a matching grant.
3. One more thing though. Too much guidance you end up controlling or mollycoddling them.They don't learn to think for themselves.Remember, the goal here is competence,self reliance and independence. Let them make mistakes.Stay out of their decisions and let them experience the disappointments of a bad buy.What is precious is they learn how to choose,make choices and grow in making good decisions outside your supervision and your bearing down on them.

Today Is The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Building Your Dynasty...

Some food for thought for the weekend.. the following material has been culled from Time.com's Archives...

1. Sheet by sheet, they cut the precious cotton into one-inch squares. Who?

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876251,00.html#ixzz1BXtsCXsk

2.The man who has scraped up enough money and courage to start his own business is still very much part of the American dream. In a day when U.S. big business is successfully exporting its machines and methods abroad, smaller American entrepreneurs are also exporting that dream. In Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, even Africa, hundreds of Americans—who often get their first business ideas while traveling as tourists—are setting up every sort of business from popcorn stands to advertising agencies.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,875769-1,00.html#ixzz1BXu2XMHG

No Guts,No Triumph

As you stand on the horizon of a new year pop yourself this question:What is your future going to be? Globalization has made the marketplace your oyster.The courage to go against convention,to be a high performer has never been easier than now.You've got the whole world in your hands.Step into tomorrow today.
Take the reins of your own life.Do not let it slither away into one of enduring it in quiet desperation . Life , however it has come to you or has come down to you, is do-it-yourself kit.Success is not going to abseil in from luck's skies or fate or the position of the planets.You control your own destiny.Self reliance has turned newsboys into editors,waiters into restaurateurs.You do yourself great harm in wallowing in self pity or ignoring the cries of 'Wolf!Wolf!' from those in the trenches of financial despair and hopelessness.

Set and write down your goals.Visualize them.Keep your eyes on the oak tree of your goals.Learn new skills.But stay course.Persist,push on.There's a world waiting out there-go for it!If you're stuck in a rut of a job stay away from 'pity' sessions or groups of 'Gripes Anonymous'.You may think it's good to be with them but you are actually clambering back onto the shipwreck you slid off from earlier.Instead raft away.Find a new beach.Find a new trail.Start anew.Make new footprints.A life without danger,daring and perils faced is a life not lived. To discover a new sea you will have to leave shore.

No Guts , No Glory

The Money Need

As the New Year dawns will everything just go on the way it is..or will there be drama,chaos or what else will it be? It's a good time to remember Ralph Waldo Emerson's words :"We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities."
Here's one overworked teacher's road to financial freedom without being an expert or having  had to study masses of marketing materials.Of planting an income generating tree now than blowing away a rainy day fund or a saved-up cash nest starting a business ...

The Money Need

This Page Is Not For You If ....

This page is not for you if...

• you love blogging more than building a rainmaker's income 
• you are stuck on " free," even at the expense of time, money and low traffic and no income 
• you already have or own a significantly profitable Web-based business

The rest of this page is for you if you want to blaze a new trail to grow a rainy day income instead of pouring yourself into a new business that demands huge funds, manpower and resources and if you are...

• new to all this ( perhaps even skeptical about the idea of building profitable e-businesses)
• aware that it is possible to earn life-impacting income online, but have yet to succeed
• highly Web-savvy, trying for years, and can't figure out why significant profits elude you. 

 the rest of the page ....

A Tale Of Two ONCE Fishing Villages

What set off this race and the ensuing 'battle' for supremacy?The race that set many a page ablaze in newspapers in South East Asia for decades?Both were Great Britain's enclaves.Both were mere fishing villages.What transformed them into the financial hubs of Asia?

As the race kicked off in the '60's a policy of tight budgets, low taxes and a non interfering government gave space to free wheeling entrepreneurism to take to the skies in Hong Kong.Far away, the other fishing village ,
Singapore, got off  to a start on a raft of  a government of professional bureaucrats.Smart,well paid civil servants and decision makers navigated it's course.How did they race through those twilight years?One was the energy from it's people, the other the energy from the leadership.Hong Kong relied on the entrepreneuralism of it's people and their hunger for wealth and better tomorrows which gave them the spirit and energies to drive through hard,biting times.Singapore on the other hand worked hard at reinventing itself,stealthily pushing off into the economic waves of the future - high tech , software development etc - with a leadership that was priming itself for crisis management anytime, all the while.

So what works? Perhaps it's the persistency of approaches,of crossing frontiers,challenging practices , questioning the unquestioned.But above all , a willingness to GO into the future instead of waiting for it to arrive has given these former fishing villages leagues mileage.

Your talents and energies are all the pedals that could give you an edge over your peers if you raft off and ask,seek and knock on a new frontier.