The Money Smart Family System

As a mother of 3 small children, I loved this book and am so glad I read it while they are still little and we can implement changes now. It has so many practical, life-changing tips and lessons that I have already seen impact my kids and our family system. They teach how to raise financially smart and independent children by giving life lessons and guidelines at each stage. Many of the chapters are broken down into 5 stages, which are: the $5 stage (ages 0-5), the $50 stage (ages 6-11), the $500 stage (ages 12-17), the $5,000 stage (ages 18-23) and finally, the $50,000 stage (ages 24 and beyond). Because of this breakdown in ages and respective lessons at each age, parents of children at all ages can greatly benefit from the book. One example that I especially appreciated was their view on teaching kids how to save money. They break the savings into: spend, save and give. We have found a piggy bank that is divided into those three areas which makes it easy for small children to visualize the separation of savings. It helps teach them from a young age the importance of long-term savings, giving to charities, church and/or those in need, and short term goals of the spending category. It has been wonderful to teach these values to our boys at a young age with the hopes that these values will stay with them throughout their lives as to how they view money. Another thing they teach is the point system where kids can earn points for doing chores, things around the house and family household duties, and the points are cashed in at the end of the week for money. We have implemented this within our family and it has helped tremendously in positively motivating our kids help with the household activities, and increase their positive behavior in various other areas. They have looked forward to payday and have enjoyed seeing rewards for their hard work and have learned to really value purchases with this money because they have worked hard to attain it, rather than things just being given to them. Lessons learned have been: greater appreciation for things they buy, patience in waiting to payday, importance of giving to others and learning to have longterm savings also. I would highly recommend this book to any and all parents wanting to raise financially responsible children who will one day be fiscally wise adults.