Outwitting the Money Monsters - Part One - Excerpt from Raising Financially Fit Kids

By Joline Godfrey

Even if you are the model parent with a firm grasp of your own financial responsibilities, there are some daunting money monsters poised to challenge your authority as a money mentor.

Among the top four:

1. Time: For most families there is none.
2. Peers: Often more powerful than family.
3. Media & Marketing: With bigger budgets and competing agendas, may sabotage your best efforts.
4. Magical thinking: From the Tooth Fairy to ATMs to stories of straw into gold (think Enron!), kids get mixed messages about the reality of money.

This month, we'll take a look at Money Monster #1: Time.

Let's face it, you have no extra time. Whether you have a staff of five (or are a staff of five!), if you're like most people, every day comes to its close with a list of unfinished 'to dos.' One thing that won't be helpful is to give you another list of 'must dos' to make you feel guilty. That's not the purpose of this book. Instead, the aim is to help you become a better money guide for your children while getting you to bed earlier.

Creating a Money Mentoring Team

One way to compensate for lack of time is to create a money mentoring team for your kids. Your team should include friends, relatives or acquaintances who:

- Are comfortable talking about and managing their own money
- Have some special expertise or unique knowledge that will be interesting to your kids
- Are willing to give your kids 2-3 days per year- for a lunch or dinner, to hang out at their place of work do some other special event with them, or just be available for money questions and advice.

Kids report that parents find it easier to discuss drugs and sex with them than money. Which is to say the conversations rarely happen, building a real Money Mentoring team is one way to get the subject on the table and in the real lives of your kids. You can create the team by reviewing who you know:

- Has your sister been able to acquire a respectable nest egg?
- Do you have a friend who raises money for non-profits and can talk about the world of philanthropy?
- Do you know anyone who works in mortgage loans, or commercial credit? Ask them to take your teenager for an afternoon to visit a house that is being sold and talk about how the mortgage process works.
- How about the parent you met at the last PTA meeting who mentioned they're in charge making sure their company's benefits are 'family friendly.' How about asking them to talk about what a family friendly benefit IS?
- Or think about successful entrepreneurs you know-would they talk about their life choices with your kids? Can they explore corporate life vs. the entrepreneurial life?

The idea is simply to find a group of people with whom you can barter time: ask them to spend a couple of days a year with your kids (a team of six can translate into 12-18 days of money talk a year for your kids). Of course you will need to offer a service in return-if not money mentoring, maybe a gift certificate for a massage or a great bottle of wine would do the trick. This is a practical solution for spreading the work around and facing the fact that you probably won't uncover an hour a week for a full-fledged money program for your kids.

Every family will create a different team. You might organize your best friend, a grandparent, your investment advisor (more on that later), maybe an aunt and a co-worker all to be on the team. Your best friend might recruit her father, a co-worker, a favorite teacher. Whatever the particular make-up, the idea is to create an extended family of money mentors who will, over time, reinforce key ideas and expectations, offer a steady stream of money skill building experiences, and take the pressure off you as the only source of your children's financial education. Think of your team as part of that 'village' you need to raise a child!

Joline Godfrey is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and mentor, leading the movement to increase financial literacy and empowerment in young people. Her most recent book is Raising Financially Fit Kids. Ms. Godfrey has been featured on Oprah, NBC's Today Show, the CBS Early Show, Lifetime Television, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Fortune, etc. Independent Means Inc. is the nation's leading provider of financial education programs, summer camps, products, and online subscription services.