In the previous post I talked, perhaps more accurately, got on my soapbox about how crucial it is to teach our kids to handle money. Learning real life money skills can and ideally should start at an early age, but if it hasn’t, it’s never too late to start, even at the high school (or adult) level.

Let me share with you some practical things we have been doing to learn about and improve our real life money skills that might give you some ideas for your family. (As a side note, this has become a learning process for our entire family )

Responsibility for purchases

The first thing we did was give each of our teens their clothing budget money – the amount we would have spent on them – and let them manage it.

Lessons learned:

• How fast it could go – looked like a lot of bucks at first, but went very quickly
• How to shop smarter and stretch the money
  • Now they check out sale racks first
  • Don’t buy anything if it’s not on sale
  • When they have time, they shop at thrift stores.
• Brand names aren’t worth the price tag
• Shock at the amount of money some of their friends spend on clothes & how important brand names are to them

Checking Account

One of the next things we did was open up a checking account.

Read the rest of this entry »

In graphic design, there’s a term called “white space”. Good design leaves plenty of room for white space in the margins and throughout the piece – space where there is nothing but paper showing through. White space is restful to the reader’s eye and evokes a non-busy, non-overwhelming feel to the publication. White space is an important design element that invites the reader to keep reading.

We need white space in our lives too. Read the rest of this entry »