30 Days to Becoming a Better Parent Day 30: A Penny Saved Is A Penny Earned

The picture you see here was a few years ago when my daughter (then at age 3 and ¾) took her first venture into being a saleswoman. At a two-day rummage sale she wanted to sell cookies and kool-aid so we put up the money for the supplies and let her have her shot at making some money.

During the first day she was amazing and stayed with it for almost 8 hours, which as most of you know is an amazing feat for an almost 4 year old. She was asking all of our patrons “Do You Want A Cookie” before they even got out of their cars, and most would favor her with some patronage. It was quite humorous and people throughout the day mentioned that we had a born business woman on our hands.

This weekend made me start thinking about the right and wrong ways to teach our children about the value of money and the value of hard work. I mean I believe that I emulate the value of hard work in my every day work and show that to my daughters. Yet, I still want them to understand that money comes from hard work and that it mut be respected.

The money that Diva-J did make (just over $40) was provided to her and she had the choice of what she wanted to do with it (though we encouraged her to save at least ½ of it). She decided to purchase some Disney polly pockets and to save the other ½ in her savings account. All-in-all I do think that we taught her some about the money that she made from her work, but I do know that there is more that she needs to learn.

After thinking about this, I decided to examine this a bit more for resources that I could use with my own girls. I found the following resources:

• http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/05/12/teaching-entrepreneurship-and-investing-eight-ideas-for-parents-who-want-to-instill-good-personal-finance-values/
• http://www.stretcher.com/stories/01/010115f.cfm
• http://www.teachingkidsbusiness.com/entrepreneurship-program.htm
• http://www.teenvestor.com/parents/parents_introduction.htm