Blogging Away Debt

The Get Real Girls and Keeping Up With the Joneses

First of all, if you are stopping by here from the Get Real Girls radio show out of Minneapolis…Welcome! I was humbled when they asked me if I wanted to be on their show this week because they had me on back in April as well.

This week, we discussed keeping up with the Joneses. As I mentioned on the show, I have a weak spot when it comes to family visiting. We live quite many miles away from our family and we get a visit from them about once a year. Before we started on our debt reduction journey, as soon as I heard that someone was visiting I hit the stores.

We got new clothes, new sheets, new decorations, new doormats, etc. It ended up being a huge shopping spree that was financed with our credit cards!

I know why I did it. I wanted it to look like we were doing well. In fact, though, we weren’t doing well at all. I was trying to keep up with the Joneses – that imaginary family that lives the “good life.”

We had perfectly fine clothes in our closet. Our sheets were fine too, although they don’t all match. The decorations in our house were plentiful enough and we didn’t need a fancy doormat. The spending that I did was just putting us more into debt and we ended up with a lot of stuff.

I have learned a lot since those days. A book that helped me greatly was Debt is Slavery. That book led us to having three garage sales this summer and I am still finding things to get rid of. We clearly did not need to purchase all of those things and we clearly didn’t need to go into debt for it. I am so much happier now that the clutter is gone and I have a better understanding of what I value in my life. It’s not about impressing others…it’s about my family and making sure we are financially secure.

If you’d like to know more about me, I just updated my about me page. You can also keep updated with what is going on by stopping by or you can subscribe to receive automatic updates.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks to the Get Real Girls for having me on! 🙂

Teaching Kids About Money

by Tricia

My son is only five years old right now (soon to be six, though!). He doesn’t really understand many things about money, but I’ve still been trying to do a few things here and there to help him grow up to be responsible with money. We are going to give it our best shot to give him good money management skills.

Thanks to another blogger holding a contest, I was able to get a Money Savvy Pig for my son for free. This special piggy bank has four slots where kids can put their money: Spend, Save, Invest & Donate. It has been fascinating to watch my son divide up his money. I thought he would put everything into the spend slot, but he has put money into all of them. He’s a little confused as to what it means to donate (he keeps trying to give Mom and Dad the money in the Donate slot LOL), but hopefully with the Christmas season soon upon us, he’ll understand it a little bit better. We’ll give him choices as how he can donate his money.

I’m also planning on giving him a special extra bonus when he loses his first tooth. Along with a gold dollar (if I can get a hold of some), he will get a $25 savings bond from the tooth fairy. When he’s older, he can see how much money that savings bond grew into.

Probably the hardest part (but also the best part) is to teach him about spending money wisely. He often sees toys on TV or in the store and says, “I want that!” Times like those, I try to point out similar items he may already have at home. If it’s construction related, that is pretty easy to do. Other times I may try to show him similar items that are more affordable. Another thing that I do is to point out things I would like, but I do not buy them. I try to show him by example that sometimes there are things Mommy and Daddy want as well, but we do not buy them. I also now talk through my thought process when comparing what items to buy so he can listen in and be an active participant.

This older article from Forbes agrees about the role model part:

“As a parent, the best way to teach a child about finances is to be a role model,” says Edward Powell, chief consumer officer at LendingTree.com in Charlotte, N.C. “You should show restraint with money. Your child should see you budget, comparison-shop and make regular contributions to a savings account. It’s not enough to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk.”
[Via Forbes] (thanks Amy for the link!)

There is a balance, though. While you want to make sure your children understand spending limits and budgeting, I don’t think you should let them in on your specific financial situation. For my son, he has no idea right now about our debt situation and he likely won’t know about it for some time. He still has the right to be a kid and not be burdened by our financial problems.

For those of you with children, is there anything special you are doing to try to teach your children about money?

That reminds me, it’s almost time to do a little personal finance interview with my son again (we did one when he was four and did another one when he was five). I love hearing his answers 🙂