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"Managing Mammon"
Last Saturday, I received a tip from Gary North’s Tip of the week , that had a video link in it about helping your kids become entrepreneurs: Why you should, and some tips on how to do it. Below is the video (This video does contain a little swearing and talk of alcohol.)
The speaker in the video introduced me to a great idea for helping to teach my kids to think creatively, and to help train them to look for opportunities to make money (i.e. entrepreneurs).
He advised to tell your children to look for things they can do around the house, business, etc. that need to be done. Then, approach him with the desire to do it, as well as a price. They negotiate the price for the task, and the child does it. They then receive money for the task.
So, I approached Arwen, my oldest at 5 years old, and told her this idea. She immediately started looking for something that needed to be done. What did she pick? She chose to help de-weed our flower bed around the back of the house.
I then asked her what she’d charge me to do it. She said that she’d do it for $0.60. I agreed! I also promised the same to Charis (my 4 year old) if she helped.
Arwen then spent the next hour and a half, tirelessly picking out weeds and grass in our flower beds.
She did a great job! She didn’t get done, but she had quite a bit of work to show for her effort.
Charis helped some too, but she kept getting distracted. She did help with the cleanup.
All in all, I’m excited about using this new advice with helping my children become entrepreneurs. I want nothing more than for my children to go so much farther, and learn so much more than me when it comes to business. I think this will help build the skills they need to do just that.
This should be one of Dave Ramsey’s baby steps, but people don’t think about this when it comes to their finances. I’m currently working through both Dave Ramsey’s course, and a course from www.deliverancefromdebt.com, a free site by Gary North with a 12 step course for getting out of debt.
I’m on step 4 of this course. I’m doing multiple courses, because in a multitude of counselors, there’s more wisdom.
Dave Ramsey
This step is very important, but it’s a step that was left out of Dave Ramsey’s course. North argues that a big reason why people get caught up in their debt, is that they ultimately have no higher calling for living.
He argues that an integral part to getting out of debt, is by finding your “calling.” He defines calling as that which you could do in which you would be most difficult to replace. Your calling, is that impact that you would like to make on the world, that you would like people to talk about when you’re dead.
He says that your vocation or job is not the same as your calling.
You can read the rest of the article HERE. I’d recommend his course as well. It comes in 12 steps, and each step is delivered to you once a week for 12 weeks.
Today, I tried something new with my kids. We had some play money sitting around that I had bought a couple months ago, and hadn’t played with yet. So… I thought I’d give them their first lesson in money management.
We opened the packages and laid all the money out in the middle of the floor separated by denomination.
Next, I got out a big box of candy that Grammy had sent us for Valentine’s Day. I explained to them that they were going to be buyers, and I was going to be a seller. I gave them each $100 in play money, and told them that I was going to randomly pull a piece of candy from the box. I would then go around our circle and ask for a bid from each buyer.
I explained to them that as buyers, they should try to offer me as little money as possible to purchase my candy. On the other hand, as the seller, my goal was to get the highest bid for my candy. They were not required to place a bid for the candy that was being offered. They could wait and save their money for a better piece that may come along.
With these things in mind, we began our lesson.
The first piece of candy I pulled out was a gummy candy. My first bidder was my oldest, Arwen, who’s 5 years old. She immediately offered me her entire alotted amount of $100. Me being the opportunist that I am, I accepted her offer.
Moving along, I pulled out the next piece of candy that was up for bidding, a large gumdrop. Since Arwen was already out of money, I skipped to Charis for her bid. She initially offered me $50, but quickly changed her mind and offered me $100! Again, I couldn’t beat that deal, so I sold her the gumdrop for $100.
Next, I pulled out another gumdrop. I informed my oldest two children that they were out of money, to which Arwen said, “Well we could just get some more.” If only it were that easy…
Ezra, my 2 year old, was all that was left. I asked him what he would bid. He picked up one of his $20 bills and handed it to me saying, “Ehh…”? I accepted his bid, and moved to the next piece of candy.
Being the only one who could bid, I offered the candy to Ezra and asked him how much he would give me for it. He handed me another $20 bill, and I accepted. He now had two pieces of candy, whereas his sisters only had one each, and he still had $60 left!
This time I pulled some chocolate from the box! 
Again, Ezra was the only one who had money to bid. It now started to dawn on the girls that money is something you have to take care of. They had blown theirs immediately, and here was their little brother, already with two pieces of candy, and about to get a third!
Ezra was the man. He was rolling around on the floor as if he had an imaginary bed of money to lay on, enjoying the candy he had gotten at such a good deal!
The girls were really starting to get it now. They weren’t getting anymore candy.
I stopped our experiment for a moment, and asked my girls why Ezra had ended up with more candy than they did. They both quickly answered that Ezra had more money than they did!
Oh, the answer of the covetous heart!
I explained that they had all started off with the same amount of money, but that they were so quick to grab the first piece of candy to come along, they were willing to give away all of their money for it. If they had managed their money better, they could have had a lot more candy.
Well, I tried the experiment one more time with better results, but in the meantime, they’re not getting anywhere near my checkbook!
I’ve spent countless hours trying to create the perfect Excel spreadsheet to try to help me do something as simple as track my monthly expenses and figure out where my money is going.
I don’t like checkbook balancing. I like automated. I paid for a Quicken program a couple of years ago on our old PC, but due to the unreliability of the computer, and that I generally hate working with PC’s, I stopped using it.
Well bless my soul, I was referred to a website that would do everything this software would do. It’s also online so that I can access it from anywhere. The website’s security is topnotch. Interestingly, the site is done by Quicken.
mint.com
It’s www.mint.com. It automatically downloads bank statements, loan statements, savings accounts, you name it, it’ll download it. It has a budget tool, and helps keep you in line with where your budget is.
So how does it do this for FREE? I was curious too, and I was correct when I found the offers for credit cards, and other accounts that you could sign up for by using the links embedded within the software.
If you can’t ignore a credit card offer, then DON’T use this software.
I suggest using it for free, and sticking it to the man.
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