Propaganda pre$$ right down to the indoctrination of children in corporate capitali$m.
"For grandchildren, the gift of financial awareness" by Paul Sullivan | New York Times, December 07, 2013
A group of financial educators is advocating that grandparents, with their children’s support, give their grandchildren the gift of financial awareness.
“Grandparents are looking for opportunities to interact with their grandchildren, so why not add financial literacy to their repertoire?” said Susan J. Bruno, a certified public accountant and co-founder of CollegeDivaCFO.com....
Most grandparents, she said, have an advantage over parents: They can talk more freely with their grandchildren and, in return, their grandchildren tend to open up to them.
The fear, of course, is that grandparents are going to meddle and make life more difficult for their adult children. This can certainly happen — just as easily as grandparents can give their grandchildren all the big-ticket items that their parents say the grandchildren themselves should be saving money for. But many busy parents need someone to help them.
“Parents are overwhelmed by all their responsibilities when it comes to raising a child and doing it right,” said Susan Beacham, chief executive of Money Savvy Generation. “Why not take this help? Some parents fear they are handing their children over to their grandparents and they’ll never get them back,” but that is nonsense, she said.
“What I tell adult parents is, at the end of the day, the most impactful teacher in a child’s life is you,” she said. “Don’t worry if your parents get involved and go astray, because you’ll have the final word.”
This sounds wonderful. But how should it be done? Here is a little nonshopping holiday guide for grandparents looking for ways to connect with grandchildren about financial matters.
Of course, it all starts with a conversation, but the form that talk takes matters. The Rev. Davis Fisher, an Episcopalian minister, a former private banker and the grandfather of eight, said he was always fascinated with how people lived with money — not how they made, invested and spent it — from his time as a local minister on up through his career in business. When he became a grandfather, he felt it was important to talk to his grandchildren about this and to have deeper conversations with them than how their day at school was.
It really is a monied media and banker's pre$$. Wow!
With their parents’ consent, he started giving his grandchildren “money savvy pigs,” which Beacham created to show children the four uses of money: save, spend, donate, and invest.
Otherwise known as Wall Street bankers.
He asked them to divide their allowances into the four categories, and they would talk about those decisions at their regular breakfasts....
Now “it’s in her bloodstream.”
Peg Eddy, president of Creative Capital Management, says this is a good way to model behavior.
That must be why children are introduced to idea of a piggy bank. Right from infancy we are taught banks are good and part of the natural order.
And more situational discussions might also open up an opportunity for that crucial childhood conversation between a need and a want, she said.
Bruno said field trips worked for grandchildren of all ages, even if they were to visit a financial adviser or an accountant. To make the trip special, she said, grandparents could suggest skipping school for a day or taking a train trip into the city.
I don't know if the parents or school will be happy with that message or behavior.
The central point, though, is “to explain that everyone needs a financial team,” she said. She also encouraged grandparents to create a financial memory bank with their grandchildren. Where did they struggle or fail? What did their first car or house cost? Why did they decide to go back to school while working?
The way things are going now, grandma and grandpa will be dead before that first house or car.
“I’ve seen it be life-changing for the family dynamics,” she said.
With grandchildren who have summer jobs, Eddy said, grandparents could propose some sort of match for the dollars earned, perhaps by putting an equal amount into a Roth IRA for the grandchild or contributing to a savings account, perhaps toward a car.
Well, with Social Security being cut.... sigh.
While grandparents may go overboard with gifts, they can just as easily make mistakes with advice.
I say let 'em. Enjoy yourselves.
“I think of the grandmother who finds out the kid is saving for a bike and writes a check and says, ‘There, you’re done,’” Beacham said. “Or there’s the grandparent who forgets that this is not their primary responsibility or who doesn’t understand that by partnering with their adult children, they’ll have success.”
Yet there are subtler mistakes — like the grandfather bent on teaching his grandchildren about investing above all else when the grandchild couldn’t care less about it.
“We know that doesn’t work,” said Joline Godfrey, chief executive of Independent Means and author of “Raising Financially Fit Kids.” “If we don’t engage them first by developing context around money, we’re not going to get them to a stage where we can talk about skills.”
Kids sure seem to recognize what those paper notes do and are worth pretty quick.
She said she encouraged grandparents to reframe the conversation around what was valuable to their grandchildren and not try to teach them a specific skill like stock picking.
The same goes for gifts meant to encourage investing.
“If it’s, ‘Here’s this piece of stock,’ and it doesn’t go any further, it’s a missed opportunity,” Godfrey said. “The grandparent needs to understand that unlike a gift that is a toy, this isn’t a single gift but a process.”
I was always disappointed when I got something that was good for me or would help me when I was a kid. No toy? Bummer.
Where the money to buy that stock came from and what could happen to the stock’s value over time can expand a grandchild’s understanding of money. Ultimately, it’s up to the parents to be involved in teaching their children about money.
“But what grandparents can do,” Beacham said, “is strengthen your money message.”
Give the kid a new$paper.
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I'll bet I know the perfect gift for little Johnny or Jill!
