Summer reading programs have begun all across the country! Have you signed up at your local public library yet?
I kicked off this year’s program by checking out a copy of The MoneySmart Family System: Teaching Financial Independence to Children of Every Age.
The book penned by Steve & Annette ‘Economides’ (oh please) details their overly complex allowance system that they have developed to help raise productive members of society. The book starts off well, talking about the 5/50/500 concept whereby a small child will make a $5 request, a tween will make a $50 request/mistake, a teenager will make a $500 request, a college student will make a $5,000 request, and an adult child will scale up to $50,000 mistakes/requests. The sooner that you teach money handling to children, the less costly the requests and mistakes they make later on in life will be. In their words, kids will take everything that you give them, so it pays to control the purse strings early on in life and not bail them out of smaller goof ups.
The book takes a decided turn for the worse when the authors proudly state that allowances are bad and parents shouldn’t use them, then launches into a multi chapter discussion of their family’s allowance (er point) system.
Each child earns 0-5 points a day for completing expected tasks, like getting out of bed, and at the end of the week, the parents have to tally up the points and use some weird sliding age weighted scale to turn the points into an allowance (oops, they call it a paycheck).
If you have hours of idle time as a parent and are looking to add some complexity to your life, then by all means read up on the MoneySmart Family System.
The Good
- 5/50/500 axiom
- Tells parents not to bail out kids mistakes
- Includes discussion of all age groups from 2-24+
The Bad
- Chapters and chapters of overly complex allowance systems
- The really corny made up stage name
- The better than thou attitude (they do personal finance consulting for their church and talk about the silly mistakes that people come to them with concerning their children)