Posts filed under 'Talking About Money'
We recently got an email from Sarah Bowman and Diane Phillips Shakin, the creators of Kids Off The Couch. Their idea was simple:Â
“A bowl of popcorn and a memorable movie. Like a spoonful of sugar, the magic of a good film will lure kids to cultural outings that are more than typical kid fare. We call these film and excursion pairings Popcorn Adventures. Together with our kids, we have pondered the universe at planetariums, explored ethnic neighborhoods and learned how our local newspaper lands on our doorsteps each morning.”
Each week, Sarah and Diane select a movie that kids will enjoy and that parents can use as the launching pad for discussions and ideas. They provide an overview of the film, conversation starters to help parents talk to their kids about the film and suggestions for a cultural adventure with your kids. For Thanksgiving week, they featured Oliver. Conversational ideas included asking your children to imagine life on the streets. How would they choose betwen long hours with little food at a work house or a life as a young criminal with Fagan’s gang? And then they offered ideas for volunteer activities between Thanksgiving and New Years. Our segment involved Paper Moon, which featured Tatum O’Neal as Addie.  Tatum’s Academy Award winning performance as a nine year old con artist made her the youngest person to ever receive an Oscar. Sarah and Diane used Paper Moon as a vehicle to talk about kids and money and to offer suggestions for other films, websites and books.
Kids Off The Couch is beautifully illustrated by Laura Cornell, who also illustrated the wonderful children’s books by Jamie Lee Curtis. Right now, the website offers specific suggestions for cultural adventures in Los Angeles and New York. More cities will be added in the future. We strongly recommend that you sign up for the free weekly newsletter at www.kidsoffthecouch.comÂ
January 28th, 2007
Last year, we were asked by VISA, USA to help them create a “money personality” quiz that could be accessed through their educational website www.practicalmoneyskills.com. Our initial reaction was a bit sceptical. After all, a number of pages in The Financially Intelligent Parent are devoted to the problem of credit card use and abuse by teens and young adults. We ended up pleasantly surprised. VISA’s website offers excellent tools for anyone interested in learning to budget, becoming a more intelligent consumer and handling credit responsibly.Â
When Eileen was working on her doctoral dissertation in psychology (she was studying the psychological effects of sudden wealth), she became increasingly unhappy with much of the contemporary writing about people’s relationship with money. These tended to put people in little boxes and usually those boxes were pretty negative.  After much thought, Eileen realized that people have a relationship with money in three areas: how they acquire their money; how they use their money (spending vs. saving); and how they manage (or mismanage) their money. After a good deal of tweaking, Eileen introduced the concept of a three dimensional relationship with money to financial professionals through an article in The Journal Of Financial Planning.
Working with VISA, we’ve taken that three dimensional paradigm of money relationships and created an interactive quiz that you can find in the At Home section of Practical Money Skills For Life. There are no right or wrong answers. You identify your own relationship with money in each of the dimensions and the quiz points you to tools on the VISA website that you might find of interest. For example, if you find that you tend to spend a bit too much each month, the quiz will point you to articles on smart shopping. If you have a problem creating a budget, the quiz will take you to tools that make creating a budget a snap.
August 8th, 2006
We’ve spent all morning vido taping the news release for the new money personality test that will be appearing on VISA’s Practical Money Skills For Life website (www.practicalmoneyskills.com) later this week. More to be announced soon!
August 4th, 2006
