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Fun With Family Finances

From the Baltimore Sun.

"Fiscal irresponsibility is everyone's favorite target these days — look no further than last week's midterm elections, where attacking reckless federal spending was a successful Republican rallying cry. Here in Maryland, the state recently began requiring its public schools to teach every high school student a class in personal financial literacy.

That's all well and good, but isn't this a job for the parents as well? To augment the state's effort, I'm offering my family-instilled and personally developed consumer lessons to emphasize the integral role parents must also play in educating students about money matters."

The article then goes on to talk about the author's experiences as a young boy learning from his parents.

"Thus, I learned to resourcefully and comparatively shop, financially prepared, either for items I critically needed or desperately wanted (and could still afford). In passing this wisdom on to my children during shopping trips — often with my own coupons — I sometimes bored them. However, over time, they too learned the pleasures and savings inherent in securing the lowest price possible."

He expanded the money lessons when he passed his repertoire onto his own kids.

"Teaching students personal financial literacy is long overdue. But all children (and perhaps especially those who aspire to elected office today) also critically need domestic modeling of consumer responsibility and supervised practice to ace the real-life class.

It's up to us as parents to provide practical financial experiences to our children. Our own example is even more important."

If you have kids, this article is a really good read. Even if you DON'T have kids, it gives you hope for future generations.

Posted by Cute at 7:56 PM

Labels: financial (non-tax)