Why Let Kids Use Money

Kids learn from experience. We know this. That’s why schools spend so much money on programs that give kids “authentic,” “hands-on” lessons. One of the most important things that children will learn as they grow up is how to handle money, but for the most part, schools don’t teach it, let alone provide “hands-on” activities to kids. Money just doesn’t have a high priority in the curriculum. So that leaves you, as a parent, wondering, “How am I going to teach my children to be responsible with money?” It’s actually pretty easy, but first you have to let go a little bit. I’ll explain…

A common way that parents handle money is by establishing guidelines and rules, or giving kids money only after they earn it, and then letting them spend it on whatever they choose.  They are learning all the time by watching how we handle these financial issues.   With that in mind, here are some tips for what works when kids learn money.

1. It’s having and using money that will teach them the most about it.   Transfer responsibility for certain financial obligations to our kids when they are young.
   • Give kids age appropriate amounts of money that is matched to a category of spending. Examples of this  might be friends gifts for elementary kids, entertainment money for pre-teens, clothing money for High schoolers.
   • Give them the amount of money your family has decided is available for the category and let the young person figure out how to use it to get what they need.
2. Let them make real choices with their money, and don’t manage their choices or come to the rescue.  Let kids learn from their mistakes with money.
   • If (and likely when) they run short, offer them an advance or loan, and be sure to charge interest.  This is the best lesson on the reality of credit card debt.  Remember that they are learning and will likely make mistakes.  Be patient and supportive, but keep it real.
3. Do have your kids save 10% of all the money they acquire, and create a separate account for investment savings. Most kids (and adults for that matter) save to spend, but saving to invest makes a lot more sense.
   • Begin exploring ways that they can use the “saving to invest” money to make more money.  Since your children will not be touching the money anytime soon, take advantage of time deposits for higher interest.
   • Once they have enough seed money, help them start their business project or open an investment account through Sharebuilder, where they can buy portions of a stock based on their available funds.

The Money Academy was built from conversations I had with my daughter when she started asking about money at the age of nine. Thankfully, I went on the journey of discovery with her rather than just answer her questions. I found out that I was in my own work-spend cycle, and it was never going to change until I started saving and investing. We now have an in-school money curriculum, a summer camp and even a family money game! It’s amazing what you and your kids can create when you let yourself discover what money is all about.

Learning by Doing

Today’s email post from my favorite parenting group is about how kids learn from their mistakes.  This is key to how kids learn in Money Academy Camp, by trial and error.  It’s the process of coming up with their own ideas, trying them out and then adjusting their plan according to what they learned from the experience.

Enjoy this article and imagine how you can use this to make a difference in your relationship to your child’s learning.

:: Go With the Flow… Even If It’s ‘Wrong’ ::

Sometimes we think we’re doing our kids a favor
when we tell them the “right” way to do something:
“No, dear… Do it *this* way.”

We think we’re just saving them the hassle of
reinventing the wheel, or preventing something from
being “wasted,” or saving time. But our corrections
also send unintended, unspoken messages, like…

* The end result is more important than the process.
* Efficiency is more important than joy.
* There is no value in making mistakes.
* Better to go with a “sure thing” than to take risks.

In other words, frequently correcting children
undermines their (and our) creativity!

So next time you see your child doing something the
“wrong” way, ask yourself if it’s really so bad that
you can’t go along with it. See if you can relax and
enjoy witnessing his or her process of discovery.

Children who are allowed to find their own way
learn that they *can* find their own way.

http://dailygroove.net/wrong-way

Holiday Break Camp in Austin

The Holiday Season is right around the corner.    How about giving your kids the gift of a fun week at Money Academy Camp, learning and earning!

Kids come together for the week and create a real business, making and selling a real product, and they get to keep the profits!

Our plans for a Holiday Break Camp are coming together now.  Let us know which week works best for you.  We’re still deciding on the best dates so give us your feedback and we’ll prepare to give your kids the best camp experience ever!  Where else can they go to camp and come home with a check for profits they made during the week?

Vote now:

____December 19-23
____December 26-30

 

Getting Kids “Money Smart” in Asheville

Last week, we completed the inaugural Money Academy Camp in Asheville, NC.   For one week, 11  young people from ages 7 – 15 came together to create a successful business project, making almost $200 in just two days of selling.  With the help of Lev’s accordion playing to attract customers to the booth, the campers sold hand painted canvas bags and individual greeting cards.

We had a special surprise when WLOS (the local ABC affiliate) came by and interviewed a couple of the kids to share the news with their viewers.  Watch for a link to that news story later this week!

Thanks Asheville and Neo Cantina for embracing us with such warm hospitality!  We’ll be back July 25-29 to deliver one more session of the camp this summer.  See you then!

Like our Facebook  Page for Asheville and get $25 off  the next session of camp!

Mystery Shoppers Wanted for Kid Business Camp

In the Money Academy Camp, we don’t tell the kids how to run their business.  We let them make their own mistakes and learn from the experience.  This creates an environment where they take complete ownership of the experience and get to fully enjoy their accomplishments for themselves.

This is where you come in.   There will be two campers outside the business location with a table set up selling their wares.  You will pretend to be a customer for the kids’ camp business, just as you would at any place of business.  Immediately following your shopping experience, you will meet and consult with the team of young business owners as they evaluate their approach.

Steps to the process:

1.       From a distance where the campers won’t notice you, observe how they are set up, how they are behaving, their appearance and interactions with customers.  Inconspicuously record your impressions. 

2.       Visit the camper business establishment and pretend to be a customer.  When you approach, notice how they engage you.  Ask the kinds of questions you would ask if you were a customer who happened to be coming to the host business establishment.  You can make a purchase or not, it’s up to you.

3.       Notice the Money Academy Staff and how they handled themselves in relation to the Campers.  Their role is to support the campers in being safe and help them notice their presentation and interactions.  The Staff is not there to make sales or answer questions about the Campers’ Business.  They will have information about the Money Academy to share, if there are customer questions about the program. 

4.       Proceed to the Camp meeting room, where you will be greeted by our staff and they will prepare the Campers to meet with you.

Money Academy Camp at two locations this week!

This week, June 20-24th, camps are going on in two locations:   Book People and Brick Oven-Arboretum!   The kids have come up with a business product and start selling tomorrow.   Stop by and check out their unique products and watch kids getting “Money Smart”.

Camp starts June 20th at Brick Oven

For the first time, Money Academy Camp will be hosted at Brick Oven, Arboretum!  It’s a convenient location for our Northwest Austin families!  With just 5 days to go before camp starts, we still have space in this session.

Get your kids “Money Smart” this summer!  It’s the best investment  you can make in their future of financial stability.

Brick Oven

June 20-24

Register online now to hold your space.

University Federal Credit Union gives Camp Graduates free accounts!

Like The Money Academy, University Federal Credit Union understands the importance of setting a sound foundation for your kid’s financial future. As part of  camp enrollment, all campers will receive their share of their business profit by direct deposit into a UFCU savings account.

These Free accounts are provided, courtesy of  University Federal, as a service to ensure that your child’s hard earned camp funds are deposited quickly and safely along with giving them an opportunity to continue to save and earn on their money.

The Kidz/ Teen Solution Package gives you:

• Ki dz /Teen Savings Account  No Monthly Fee and a Free ATM card ( dividends paid quarterly on balance of $5 or more*)

• Option to add:   12 mo.-Early Savers Certificate.  Minimum opening deposit of $100, add more money anytime, divi dends paid monthly at 3% up to $20,000*.

First Camp of summer starts June 6th!

Our first camp of the summer starts Monday and there is still room to enroll your child in the best experience of their summer!   Parents report that what their kids learn about money in camp stays with them forever.  After 7 years of working with kids in this  program,  we’ve seen dramatic results from the graduates.

Kids are bombarded with messages of consumption and spending from the media and the culture.  How are we going to ensure their future of financial responsibility and independence?

We have to engage them in real-life, real-money experiences that have them learn about money first hand.  Most importantly, they can see for themselves that they are many ways to use money besides spending.  What if we used money to make more money?   Now that’s not something that was never taught in school!  And don’t we all wish we had learned that when we were kids.

Money Academy Camp gets kids inspired to use money to build assets and financial independence.  In camp, the kids create a real business for the week, sell a product for real money, and they get to keep the PROFITS!   Now that’s what gets their attention.

Make an “Investment” in your child’s financial future!

Money camp gives kids itch to get rich

By Jay MacDonald • Bankrate.com

    Gayle Reaume bears absolutely no resemblance to Donald Trump. Her eager-beaver entrepreneurs don’t have BlackBerrys, tattoos, entourages or egos the size of Cleveland.

But Reaume accomplishes what “The Celebrity Apprentice” can only dream of: She makes learning about money fun for kids.

Each summer, the founder of The Money Academy and her merry band of counselors oversee more than a dozen weeklong camps at merchant locations in the Austin, Texas, area. Camps serve kids ages 8 to 18.

Call it “The Apprentice: Summer Camp Edition.”

The counselors help the kids form a basic business structure, complete with chief executive officer, chief financial officer, marketing director and sales manager. Then, they set them loose to develop a product or service and seek their fortune. The kids rotate positions so each can feel the heat.

“Monday, they’re out doing market research to determine what their customers would want to buy,” Reaume says. “By Tuesday, they’re prototyping. By Wednesday, they’re selling, doing financial statements every day, looking at profit and loss.

“They’re getting hands-on experience with money and how it works in the real world.”

Any money they make, the campers get to keep — after expenses, of course.

“I’ve never had a camp not make money because we let them learn from their experience,” Reaume says. “We let them fail. We don’t go in and tell them, ‘Make this product.’ We don’t even give them very much feedback. We don’t want to take away any of the opportunities for them to make a mistake.”

Snap, crackle and pop

Forget lemonade stands; these kids want a real piece of the action. They’ve hit the bricks with everything from hand-painted, earth-friendly canvas shopping bags to lavender bath products to organic potted herbs.

One group of teenage boys even gave lunch-hour massages to the downtown cubicle crowd at $10 a snap, crackle and pop.

“They had people come in and show them how to do foot, hand and neck massages,” Reaume says. “They had twinkle lights and Enya playing in the background and towels and warm tea. High school boys! And they made a lot of money.”

What would success be without a few hard knocks? One of Reaume’s favorites involved selling live ladybugs at an organic nursery.

“They researched and found out they could buy like 50,000 ladybugs for cheap,” she says. “The nurseryman said if you keep them cold, they don’t fly. Well, they don’t fly, but they’ll crawl! So we’ve got these little boys running around screaming with ladybugs crawling up their sleeves and pant legs. Hysterical!”

Accidental money guru

Reaume, a single mom who worked in publishing, hardly set out to become a money guru. She admits she couldn’t even manage her own finances until she joined an investment club in the mid-1990s.

But when her daughter Evan A., then a second-grader, asked to start a pint-size investment club with her friends, Reaume figured she would teach them all about it. Instead, she spent a year and a half listening to and learning from them.

The more she heard, the more she realized that kids have a natural curiosity about money. Unfortunately, money is still not a topic for discussion in most homes, and schools have failed so far to crack the code on financial education, much less figure out how to make it fun.

“Kids don’t need the kind of information that is available through most curriculums. It’s adult versions of things that have been ‘dumbed down’ to kids, and it’s not what kids need to know,” she says. “It isn’t useful to them.”

Reaume has seen the benefit of financial education in her own daughter. At 15, Evan A. manages her own career as a budding singer-songwriter but keeps it real by collecting income at the candy machine she installed years ago at Austin’s legendary Shady Grove restaurant and music venue.

True to the entrepreneurial spirit of its summer camps, The Money Academy’s curriculum stands apart from the crowd because it started with the kids.

“So many companies in the marketplace are trying to generate curriculum, but they’re so far behind the curve,” Reaume says. “We’ve got five years of development on them. We’re in a really good space to put in something that works phenomenally well. Not only that, it goes home and the kids teach their parents.”

That sure beats coming home from camp with a case of poison ivy.