Chores and MoneyA Google Alert led us to some well thought out comments on both sides of our recommendation that allowances and family chores should be kept separate. <http://sharonhr.blogspot.com/2007/02/is-it-wrong-to-pay-kids-for-chores.html>
2 comments February 11th, 2007 Chore Wars and Gender StereotypingA study by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research suggests that parents may be unconsciously perpetuating sexual stereotypes in the way they parcel out chores. The study found that boys are more likely to get paid for doing chores around the house than girls. Frank Stafford, the economics professor heading the study, speculates that parents tend to give boys more opportunities to do extra chores for which they get paid and tend to assign routine, non-paying chores, such as cooking or dishwashing, to girls. The consequences may be teaching girls to expect to make less money in the work place than their male counterparts. It may also be teaching them that the work they do is less valuable. Our thoughts? Divide chores into routine family chores that are done without payment, and extra chores that you will pay for. Don’t sexual stereotype when assigning routine chores. If taking out the trash, raking leaves and running the vacuum cleaner are routine chores at your house, remember that girls can take out the trash and rake leaves and boys can vacuum. Add comment January 30th, 2007 Technorati linkWe are creating a link for our blog with the technorati.com website. http://www.technorati.com/claim/6ij3bcyffv” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile Add comment January 28th, 2007 Alpha Moms and Viral MarketingNintendo has found a new way to market its Wii video game console: use Alpha Moms. The December 25, 2006 edition of the Los Angeles Times reported that Nintendo has merged “viral marketing techniques with Tuperware parties” by recruiting “gregarious, tech-savvy moms — whom it dubbed ‘alpha moms’ — to share the console with their friends.” According to the article, Nintendo hired a consultant to find alpha moms “who would presumably spread the word at schoolyards, soccer fields and her neighborhood.” George Harrison, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications, was quoted as saying that the “vast majority of people” who would be seeing Nintendo’s TV advertisements “were not video game players, or had potentially a negative attitude about video games.” Nintendo needed alpha moms to “open up the audience’s willingness to hear from us before we started the TV advertising.” So, the next time you hear the buzz about a new product from a friend, you might wonder whether the buzz-maker had been recruited by the manufacturer. Add comment January 28th, 2007 Rent The Movie, Make The Popcorn And Get The Kids Off The CouchWe recently got an email from Sarah Bowman and Diane Phillips Shakin, the creators of Kids Off The Couch. Their idea was simple: “A bowl of popcorn and a memorable movie. Like a spoonful of sugar, the magic of a good film will lure kids to cultural outings that are more than typical kid fare. We call these film and excursion pairings Popcorn Adventures. Together with our kids, we have pondered the universe at planetariums, explored ethnic neighborhoods and learned how our local newspaper lands on our doorsteps each morning.” Each week, Sarah and Diane select a movie that kids will enjoy and that parents can use as the launching pad for discussions and ideas. They provide an overview of the film, conversation starters to help parents talk to their kids about the film and suggestions for a cultural adventure with your kids. For Thanksgiving week, they featured Oliver. Conversational ideas included asking your children to imagine life on the streets. How would they choose betwen long hours with little food at a work house or a life as a young criminal with Fagan’s gang? And then they offered ideas for volunteer activities between Thanksgiving and New Years. Our segment involved Paper Moon, which featured Tatum O’Neal as Addie. Tatum’s Academy Award winning performance as a nine year old con artist made her the youngest person to ever receive an Oscar. Sarah and Diane used Paper Moon as a vehicle to talk about kids and money and to offer suggestions for other films, websites and books. Kids Off The Couch is beautifully illustrated by Laura Cornell, who also illustrated the wonderful children’s books by Jamie Lee Curtis. Right now, the website offers specific suggestions for cultural adventures in Los Angeles and New York. More cities will be added in the future. We strongly recommend that you sign up for the free weekly newsletter at www.kidsoffthecouch.com Add comment January 28th, 2007 Young Entrepreneurs: Doing Good While Doing WellSocial psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author of Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, points out that the less we rely on external motivators to motivate our children and the more we concentrate on helping them become internally motivated, the happier our children will be. Parents who over-emphasize the importance of money or rewards in achieving a goal, rather than the process of achievement itself, run the risk of turning their children into a kind of money junkie who has no true enthusiasm for anything except more money. This is not a particularly good recipie for a meaningful or happy life! If you are the parent of a high-school or college student with an entrepreneurial bent, check out the Working for Good program. Inspired by Csikszentmihalyi, such entrepreneurs as John Mackey, chief executive of Whole Foods Market, and Jeff Klein, chief executive of Cause Alliance Marketing, have created FLOW, a program which hopes, in their words, to use “free enterprise principles to promote sustainable peace, prosperity, and happiness for all within 50 years. “ The Working for Good program introduces teens and young adults to the concept of becoming “social entrepreneurs” who do good while doing well. The program uses Webcasts, video-conferencing and seminars to, in the words of Aman Singh of the Wall Street Journal, ”encourage entrepreneurially inclined high-school and college students to go out on their own and do something for the global good.” To download the currciulum and sign up for live webcasts, go to www.workingforgood.com. The fee is $50. Fees are used to fund future initiatives and support student projects. Check it out! Add comment August 20th, 2006 Who Pays For College?Earlier this year, Jon and I conducted a break-out session on “Raising Responsible Children In An Affluent Environment”at a conference sponsored by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. During the Q&A session at the end of the presentation, one of the attendees raised the issue of kids graduating from college or graduate school owing many thousands of dollars in student loans. Should parents pay for their children’s college educations or tell them to get student loans? What did we think? In a vacuum, the issues surrounding how parents choose to finance their children’s college education would seem to be entirely financial in nature. In reality, the choices are modeling values and sending important messages to college age children. As Sue Shellenbarger pointed out in the May 12, 2006 issue of the Wall Street Journal: “Do student loans teach responsibility — or foster a lifelong overreliance on debt? Are parents who pay their kids’ way through college modeling self-sufficiency — or martyrdom? Does requiring a student to get a job during the academic year instill a work ethic — or workaholism?” What do you think? Eileen Add comment August 14th, 2006 Find Out About Your Money PersonalityLast year, we were asked by VISA, USA to help them create a “money personality” quiz that could be accessed through their educational website www.practicalmoneyskills.com. Our initial reaction was a bit sceptical. After all, a number of pages in The Financially Intelligent Parent are devoted to the problem of credit card use and abuse by teens and young adults. We ended up pleasantly surprised. VISA’s website offers excellent tools for anyone interested in learning to budget, becoming a more intelligent consumer and handling credit responsibly. When Eileen was working on her doctoral dissertation in psychology (she was studying the psychological effects of sudden wealth), she became increasingly unhappy with much of the contemporary writing about people’s relationship with money. These tended to put people in little boxes and usually those boxes were pretty negative. After much thought, Eileen realized that people have a relationship with money in three areas: how they acquire their money; how they use their money (spending vs. saving); and how they manage (or mismanage) their money. After a good deal of tweaking, Eileen introduced the concept of a three dimensional relationship with money to financial professionals through an article in The Journal Of Financial Planning. Working with VISA, we’ve taken that three dimensional paradigm of money relationships and created an interactive quiz that you can find in the At Home section of Practical Money Skills For Life. There are no right or wrong answers. You identify your own relationship with money in each of the dimensions and the quiz points you to tools on the VISA website that you might find of interest. For example, if you find that you tend to spend a bit too much each month, the quiz will point you to articles on smart shopping. If you have a problem creating a budget, the quiz will take you to tools that make creating a budget a snap. Add comment August 8th, 2006 VISA’s Practical Money Skills For LifeWe’ve spent all morning vido taping the news release for the new money personality test that will be appearing on VISA’s Practical Money Skills For Life website (www.practicalmoneyskills.com) later this week. More to be announced soon! Add comment August 4th, 2006 The Banks Want Your KidsThe Wall Street Journal recently ran a story about banks and other financial institutions that are starting to court young savers. In the past, it has been very difficult to find banks that would open checking accounts for 13-15 year olds, which is a great time for them to learn how to balance a check book. Among the banks offering accounts are U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo and KeyBank. (Young Americans Bank in Denver is a pioneer in banking for younger children. Check them out at http://www.yacenter.org/. The Journal points out that some of the banks also offer debit or ATM cards. Depositing your teen’s allowance to a checking account that comes with a debit card gives him or her an opportunity to be introduced to plastic in an environment in which you cannot overspend. After all, once the checking account runs out of allowance, the card stops working. (But be sure the account doesn’t come with overdraft protection!) Add comment July 31st, 2006 SearchCategories
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