The Daily Dow
Wednesday, June 4, 1997
by Robert Sheard (TMF Sheard)
LEXINGTON, KY. (June 4, 1997) -- When I wrote about my son's first forays into money and value yesterday, I never dreamed it would evoke such a response. Apparently there are scores of Foolish parents thinking ahead about their young children's financial educations.
While I should beg your indulgence then for straying from the Foolish Four portfolio with this topic, let me follow up yesterday's column with a couple of ideas I've been using with my son Brenden (age 4). After all, the most basic principle of Folly is that saving is a lifetime venture.
Over the last year or two, he's picked up his basic counting skills through rather informal means, counting with us, playing games with cards, nothing elaborate. After all, to me, a kid's most important task at his age is to play and let his fancy take him where it will.
But he's shown interest in money and counting when we go shopping together so we're including him in the day-to-day process in a couple of way. One is, we bought him the Monopoly Jr. Game, which is a much simpler version of the beloved classic. (I almost like it better because it doesn't take days to play a complete game.)
He's already learning to distinguish between the different values of money. (They have bills ranging from 1 to 5 dollars. Of course he'll be disappointed when he discovers there are no real $3 and $4 bills.) And of course, rolling the die and counting spaces around the board are good fun for early numbers practice.
We also started him with an allowance (not that he has any great need for money at his age), but it was to start teaching the idea of saving, even at the most basic level. He gets $4 a week (a buck for each year old), and he has two jars, his "save" and "spend" jars. Half the allowance each week automatically goes in his "save" jar, which eventually finds its way into his college account portfolio.
The other $2 he's free to do with as he wants. If he wants something small now and blows the whole $2 at once, no worries. He's already put away the saving component. If he wants something he doesn't have the money for yet, he lets the money sit in his spend jar for a few weeks until he does. We don't dictate what he buys with his "spend" money, although it usually goes towards a figurine for his castle or a glow-in-the-dark sticky thing for his room. (His ceiling looks like the background screen for a Star Trek episode.)
I'm sure there are dozens of other easy methods to help children learn about
money and saving without making it too big a deal. (They live for the here
and now most of the time anyway.) But these have done a pretty good job for
us so far without making the process into too formal an issue. Let's see,
he turns five this year; it's time to start on dividend yields! Fool on.
(c) Copyright 1997, The Motley Fool. All rights reserved. This material is for personal use only. Republication and redissemination, including posting to news groups, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of The Motley Fool. ________________________________
Stock Change Last -------------------- T - 5/8 35.13 GM - 1/4 56.63 CHV + 5/8 72.00 MMM -1 5/8 89.75
Day Month Year
FOOL-4 -0.89% -1.71% -1.29%
DJIA -0.58% -0.84% 12.74%
S&P 500 -0.64% -0.96% 13.41%
NASDAQ -0.38% -1.47% 6.87%
Rec'd # Security In At Now Change
1/2/97 153 Chevron 65.00 72.00 10.77%
1/2/97 120 3M 83.00 89.75 8.13%
1/2/97 179 Gen. Motor 55.75 56.63 1.57%
1/2/97 479 AT&T 41.75 35.13 -15.87%
Rec'd # Security In At Value Change
1/2/97 153 Chevron 9945.00 11016.00 $1071.00
1/2/97 120 3M 9960.00 10770.00 $810.00
1/2/97 179 Gen. Motor 9979.25 10135.88 $156.63
1/2/97 479 AT&T 19998.25 16824.88 -$3173.38
CASH $609.53
TOTAL $49356.28