Budgets. Yuck. Who Needs One!

Everyone. Period.

A budget is the tool to manage what we choose to do with the money that comes in and goes out to support our life.

After all money is about choice.

Do we spend some now, do we set it aside for a rainy day, or do we give some away today? We deal with choice in any decision we make that involves our money – most of our decisions.

To know which decision is best requires knowing what money is due to come in, what money is already spoken for and what money is left over, if any. That, simply put, is what a budget helps us understand.

The sad fact is that most people do not know how to build, stick to or just plain manage a budget. Just look around – do your friends do a good job with their budgets? How about your partner/spouse? Do you feel confident in your budgeting skills?

Most importantly, what are you doing to teach your kids how to budget wisely? Do tell!

What is Enough?

I hear in so many conversations that their is not enough. Not enough jobs, enough money, enough resources, enough blue jeans, enough fun, enough opportunity, enough time, enough personal responsibility, enough love, enough freedom and the list goes on and on and on.

In other conversations I hear that "we" are not enough. How many of you have said at least one of the following about yourself at some point?

I am not:

• good enough
• smart enough
• compassionate enough
• skinny enough
• happy enough

So if this language is in our day to day conversations, what are our kids thinking and taking in about the enough question? And better yet, how to we teach them the answer to the question - especially as it relates to money?

Seems to me that if anyone is to be good at making money decisions, they need to know what is enough for each purchase or giving or saving decision we face.

For myself, I start with these questions and try to figure out in the moment if I have enough:

Do I have enough right now?
Do I have too much right now?
Do I need more right now?
Do I just want more right now?
Do I have enough to give away to others right now?

What do you do to evaluate if you have enough?

How do you share this decision making with your kids?

Great Summary of Issues in Financial Literacy Education

One of the best articles written about the challenges we face in training people to be competent in money matters.

I have believed for a long time that financial literacy education's failure to date is not about the content, as there has been enough written, produced and printed about the in's and out's of the world of money. But instead, it is an issue of delivering the training information to the right person at the right time in a form that will be most effective for them. Not such an easy task.

The article, by Tom Hanza, the President of the Investor Fund, needs to be read by all people interested in and working on the education of kids, young adults and seniors in money matters.

I am back

After a long absence, I am back.

Been busy putting together a new website to bring tools and information to parents who want to take a lead role in teaching their kids foundational money skills.

More to follow. Check out the site at www.moneywizdom.com.

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Denise

Can you beat 97% discount while grocery shopping?

While we might not want to clip coupons, file them in some folder, create a shopping list and remember to take the list and the coupons to the store. Susan, known as the "coupon queen," takes her weekly grocery bill from $152.86 to $9.43 with all of her advanced planning and coupons. Watch her video and be amazed.

IT is not that hard to PLAN ahead, CUT coupons, CREATE a shopping list and only BUY what is on the list, oh, and BRING the coupons.

Raising I.Q.

So what does the ability to delay gratification have to do with IQ?

Richard Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, in a superb new book, “Intelligence and How to Get It,” provides suggestions for raising kids IQ's:

• praise effort more than achievement
• teach delayed gratification
• limit reprimands
• use praise to stimulate curiosity

So one of the founding concepts in successfully managing money (learning how to delay gratification) has been implicated in higher IQ! And we all know — a higher I.Q. has been shown to correlate to greater success in life.

Now how is that for some new motivation Mom, Dad, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and any other money mentors our there — get out and start modeling, teaching or reinforcing the idea of delayed gratification.

Need for financial literacy rising in importance

Well after a few weeks away, I am happy to see the news out of Schwab today http://tinyurl.com/cossw2 that a recent survey of 22-28 yr old's indicates they now place being personally responsible for understanding how to handle money above all else!

Yahoo!