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Money Lesson 7 Parents Should Teach Kids

by Team Sammy

Spend Smart

Parents, teach your kids to spend smart! It is a great money habit!

Impart the invaluable lesson of smart spending to your children from an early age. It will help them protect against the thousands upon thousands of spending messages that will bombard them from birth and distract them from their aspirations. It will empower them to defend their dreams and avoid frittering away their future!

By teaching children to spend smart, you equip kids with the tools necessary to navigate a "hyper" consumer-driven society with confidence, competency, and resilience.

This early education lays the foundation for a lifetime of financial well-being, enabling them to achieve their dreams and goals while sidestepping the pitfalls of impulsive and unnecessary spending.

Spending Smart Means

Share with children these examples of what spending smart means:

  • Thinking before spending.

  • Spending less than one earns or receives.

  • Having a written budget. This includes planning, reviewing, and tracking what we spend - where we want our money to go and where it actually goes.

  • Using lists.

  • Prioritizing wants and needs.

  • Comparing, contrasting, and asking questions about purchases before spending.

  • Avoiding impulse spending.

  • Working out and building up their "waiting muscle." In other words, embracing and giving a hug to delayed gratification.

  • Minimizing debt (borrowing) and avoiding paying interest on it.

3 Outstanding Quotes and Sammyriffic Wisdom on Spending Smart

Share and discuss these quotes with your kids. Or do the same with some of your personal favorites.

(1) Be frugal. Live within your means.

― Benjamin Franklin

(2) Be mindful of your spending habits.

― Mellody Hobson

(3) Shift from being a consumer to being an investor.

― Robert Kiyosaki

Easy and Fun Steps to Teach Your Kids to Spend Smart

Parents, here are more teaching tips, activities, and exercises to encourage and get your kids into the habit of spending smart.

Teaching Tips and Activities

  • Listen to the Sammy Rabbit money songs: Don't Spend More Than You Make, Budget, Wants and Needs, and Make Your Choices Count.

  • Read the lyrics to all of the above songs.

  • Read the story Sammy's Big Dream. Review and discuss page 19. This page demonstrates Sammy Rabbit's decision not to spend money and save it instead to reach his savings goal and make his dream come true.

  • Follow up the story and songs using them as a catalyst for conversation and questions like: What are some things you can do to become a smart spender?

Activities and Exercises

  • Have kids complete the Activity Booklet for the song Don't Spend More Than You Make!

For more teaching tips, refer to Sammy Rabbit's Beginning Money Habits Module and Lesson Plan for Parents on Spending Smart. Have fun!

Free Membership to Sammy's Money School

Let's get kids financially literate, their families, and communities too.

Take action today.

Put kids on the path to increased financial safety, security, stability, wellness, well-being, and wealth.

Enroll them in Sammy Rabbit's FREE Money School Membership program. The program:

  • makes quality early-age, youth, and family financial education available immediately.

  • gives access to anyone and everyone who wants to teach their kids money habits and principles that will help both children and families establish a solid foundation to achieve increased levels of financial stability throughout their lives.

  • Get a FREE Sammy Rabbit's Money School Membership NOW!

We also welcome and invite you and your children (students) to become a PREMIUM Member of Sammy Rabbit's Money School. This is a low-cost, super-affordable way to gain access to more activities AND support Sammy's mission to bring financial literacy education to kids and families across the world.

Contact Sammy

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We welcome your questions, suggestions, and thoughts about Sammy Rabbit and his mission to get kids, families, & communities financially literate.

Your friends in early age, youth, and family financial literacy education for the last 20+ years and counting, Team Sammy!

Have a Sammyriffic day!

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