MoneyBags Life Blog
It is always nice to receive complements, but when it comes from a well-known Columnist of the Southern Illinoisan – Business Journal, Retired Associate Professor of Finance and Financial Icon/Founder of DavidOEngland.com in my hometown, it means MUCH more!
Please check out his kind words and the reasons he recommends “MoneyBags: A Guide to Teaching Your Kids About Money” as a must buy this holiday season.
Click Here
Thank you David England for your support, teaching, and wisdom over the years.
Here is to filling your MoneyBags!
It is official, today is Black Friday, which triggers people buying presents for the holidays. Of course, your kids will likely receive some of these gifts.
Over the years I have been asked how to keep kids grounded when they receive gifts, whether it is the traditional holidays, random gifts, or extravagant purchases. The givers are usually family members like grandparents, aunts/uncles, or sometimes an estranged parent may purchase gifts to offset lost quality time.
Gift giving is a very nice gesture, but unless you help your kids understand the big picture, they may begin to feel entitled or unappreciative. To help prevent this, make it a MoneyBags Moment, let your kids know that lots of events happened before that gift came to them. First, let them know that the gift is really a token of love and appreciation from the giver. The giver decided that your child was so special that they spent their hard-earned money and time on them. Explain to your kids that the giver worked to earn the money that purchased their present. Next, the giver took time to think about and locate the gift. Moreover, if it is wrapped and/or shipped this took additional time and cost.
By taking steps to educate your children about what is really behind the gift, it will help them appreciate it and the giver more. The goal is to teach them the importance of earning the money and choosing how to spend it. To drive this message home, I believe having your kids write formal Thank You cards is the answer.
This “old fashion” gesture, not only teaches your kids good manners, but it teaches them basic skills that they aren’t being taught in school. This is your opportunity to teach them how to write a Thank You note and address an envelope. As highlighted in Brian Tracy’s book “No Excuses” the act of writing actually “forces you to think and concentrate.”
Furthermore, in this day of technology and instant gratification, to receive a formal Thank You card in the mail makes this kind gesture stand out. Your kids will begin to realize that the gifts they are receiving are not typical and good manners dictate a formal acknowledgment.
So, teach your kids this valuable habit and have them sit down and formally thank the giver.
Here is to filling your MoneyBags!
Wendy
MoneyBags will be at Retrieve a Golden of Minnesota (RAGOM) Goldzilla fund raising event on September 10th (8:30-2:00) at Long Lake Regional Park in New Brighton. Come enjoy the in helping raise money for this good cause. What could be more fun than sun, goldens and helping pets that need a home!
Have you ever had an aha moment, like the old ad for Reese’s® peanut butter cups? The ones where the peanut butter and chocolate collide and make the amazing Reese’s® peanut butter cup.
In one of the several books that I have read over the years (I wish I could remember which one), it stated that one of the main reasons for the educational divide between poorer students and their peers is the lack of access to books in their home over the summer months. In my search to find my source, I ran across this amazing pamphlet by Scholastic.com with some shocking statistics.
Chocolate 
Gum Drops – A wonderful charity that provides weekend backpacks of food to at-risk children in Southern Illinois. This amazing charity was started by a classmate of mine, Amy (Carney) Simpson, to fill a vital need for thousands of kids.
Peanut butter 
MoneyBags – A book to teach kids about money. I just happen to have four cases of books sitting in my office, collecting dust as they wait to find a home.
Resee’s® peanut butter cup (MoneyBags style)
Put MoneyBags books into backpacks. Thus, a special thanks to the Carterville Rotary for covering the cost and coordinating the shipping of the books to Gum Drops. With their help, we put 160 books into the last backpacks before summer.
Here is to filling your MoneyBags!
For most people this time of year always makes them happy, since they know that summer is around the corner. However, for me, I don’t start celebrating until after tax day (April 15th – unless there it falls on a weekend or a holiday).
So, since it is Tax Time, take a minute to teach your kids about money and taxes. As stated in Chapter 11, one of the fastest ways for kids to understand the impact of taxes is for you to take some “taxes” out of their food with a big bite for the provider (you).
Furthermore, explain where money comes from and that it does not grow on trees (Chapter 47), which was my favorite dream. Consider kicking spring off with some MoneyBags fun by creating a Money Tree. Erect it up on Aril 2nd (the enactment of the 1792 Money Law), decorate it and then take it down on Tax Day!
Make sure to post a pic of your Money Tree on Facebook, I would love to see it.
Here is to filling your MoneyBags!
Wendy
After much delay, MoneyBags has entered the 21st century!!!!
I am most excited to tell you that it is official, you can now buy “MoneyBags: A Guide to Teaching Your Kids About Money” as an EBook for $9.99! As a person from the “old school,” I have always enjoyed holding and reading a physical book. However, I am surprised that I really like the EBook too.
I found the whole process rather easy. I made MoneyBags my first purchase (of course) and I am impressed at how crisp and easy it is to read. Furthermore, I like that you simply swipe to turn a page and that there are hyperlinks take you to the chapter or website with a simple click. You can navigate back and forth to different chapters via the table on contents. Plus, I can also change the font style, font size, line spacing, background color, margins, and brightness for my desired reading pleasure.
Furthermore, most people carry their electric devices everywhere, so now it is super easy to walk through a quick chapter with your kids when you are waiting at the airport, on a long car ride, or simply waiting for you meal at a restaurant.
For your MoneyBags Mission, please take a peek at the new EBook, rate it in the “Before You Go” section, and tell a friend!
Here is to filling your MoneyBags!
Wendy
A MoneyBags Moment!
Do you ever have just a magical moment? When they occur it is so awesome it is like you are dreaming. Well, that just happened to me.
It happened when I was out with my boyfriend, celebrating my 20 year anniversary of being an advisor. We went to my favorite local hole in the wall burger joint, Blue Door. It is here were we ran into our new friend Jayla.
The burger joint is tinny and the waiting room for a table is back by the bathrooms. It was there where John saw Jayla write on the black board wall “Don’t waste your money.” As we talked with here we found out it was her golden birthday (she just turned 8)!
Needless to say, I was so move, exited, and impressed that I felt the only appropriate thing to do was to give her a book. I can tell by her wisdom that her mom was taking time to teach her valuable money lessons.
Here is to filling your MoneyBags!
Professor Dan Ariely
I watched a fabulous documentary called “(Dis) Honesty: The Truth About Lies” featuring Professor Dan Ariely’s lifelong work. Many great insights came out of his research, one of which is that dishonesty grows the further one is away from actual money.
In the documentary, Professor Ariely performs a matrix study which has people take a test where compensation is received at the end based on the honor system. The subjects take a test and are given the key to the test so they can see and report how many questions they answered correctly. The subject was then asked to shred their test and answers (or so they think). Once their test was “shredded” they then proceeded to a test monitor to report how many answer they got correct and then rewarded with money accordingly (i.e. the more correct answers, the more money they received for their time). In this study, they found that people “fudged” their results by one or two answers. If they had four correct, they likely reported six.
He then does the same matrix study, but this time after shredding their test instead of proceeding directly to the monitor for cash, they were given poker chips. Then, they would proceed three feet away to the “cashier” to turn their poker chips in for cash. What he found was that this ever so slight distancing from the money doubled the “fudge factor” in how many correct answers people were willing to report. If they had four correct, they were now willing to “fudge” more and report eight correct answers.
So, he tries the study one more time, but this time, he has people do a pre-test of writing down as many of the Ten Commandments as they can remember, or swear on a Bible. In this scenario, the number of people being honest in their reported test results increased to 100%! He even tested people of other religions and atheists to see if it would yield similar results, and the results held true. The conclusion is that a simple reminder of one’s own general moral code will lead to more honest behavior bmmhzdx.
Professor Ariely’s study shows that being reminded of moral behavior and keeping it top of mind can have huge impact on behavior. As an example, one country made one small change on the letter they sent out to collect back taxes. The simple little line of “nine in ten people pay their taxes on time” increased their collection rate by 5%, which sounds like a nominal number, but for a large country it means big money!
Thus, your MoneyBags Mission is to share this blog’s link with a friend and then watch Professor Ariely’s documentary “(Dis) Honesty: The Truth About Lies” with your kids. The program is currently on Netflix or is available for download on iTunes, GooglePlay or Vimeo. After watching, discuss as a group what the implications of this research means for your family as well as each individual and how it might influence your behaviors toward money as we use more debit, credit and online currencies. Perhaps you can come up with your own family’s Code of Honor to keep in your wallets, backpacks and hang on a wall. The Family Code of Honor will be a good nudge to remind everyone to always be honest and use good financial sense.
Here is to filling your MoneyBags!
Wendy
Recently I got into the video game Hidden City. This game is a ton of fun for someone like me that enjoys finding hidden things. Before I got too deep into the game though, I read reviews and heard a common theme that a player HAS to BUY energy, rubies, and other key “pieces” in order to progress. After reading this, I decided to challenge this theory. I was going to play without spending any money ….of course!
So, as I write this blog post, I have made it to level 20 without a single purchase! For me, it is perfect that I run out of energy and the game puts me into a “play timeout”. This forced timeout makes me have do something else vs. spending an entire day gaming. This “forced timeout” is a great example of delayed gratification as I am limited in the amount I can play, which makes me appreciate the time that I can play all that much more. An added bonus is I also don’t lose my entire day playing a game. Furthermore, I love the fact that I have not spent any money too. At one point I needed a crystal to put a collection together (sorry non-gamers – imagine finding a four-leaf clover, it’s very rare) and I had to keep repeating this one part of the game over and over. Failure after failure, it was driving me crazy. I can see how easy it would be to buy my way out of it, but instead, I practiced patience and persisted through it. You should have seen my celebration dance when I finally got a crystal! I wouldn’t have had this amazing feeling of accomplishment if I just purchased a crystal.
So parents, if your kids are gamers, that is ok, but don’t let them spend money. Let them earn their game trophies by being patient and at the same time they will learn delayed gratification. Appreciating delayed gratification will help them as they master the skills of Financial saving and independence.
Here is to filling your MoneyBags!
Earlier this month, MoneyBags was the subject to an “un-boxing” on KDWB’s The Dave Ryan in the Morning Show. If you missed the segment, never fear, you can see the video at the following link. Just click the little picture of Dave below and hit the “play” triangle to start the video.
We just loved how Dave called out several chapters of the book on air and really understood the importance of the chapter on Delayed Gratification. Big thanks go out to Dave and the team at KDWB for recommending MoneyBags: A Guide To Teaching Your Kids About Money.
TheDaveRyanShow
Note: If you are having trouble watching this video, please go to Facebook – The Dave Ryan in the Morning Show – Videos – May 12th 2016.
