A kick in the butt, and hitting the reset button

First, the kick in the butt, as in motivating me to get back at writing this, and staying connected to this project.  If you end up reading this, thank you David, for asking me about my blog.  Telling the story for the first time in a while helped me get off my rear end and do a couple things:

• Write this entry
• Get caught up with the kids' allowance.

Despite what you may think, I am actually human, and sometimes things slip through the cracks.  Allowance, and the corresponding lessons that go with it, has been one of those things for the last 60 days.  No excuse really, I mean it does not take that long if I do it every week, and I have certainly found the time to watch an NCAA tournament game or two (congratulations to SDSU on a great season!).  All of that aside, today was catch up day.  We executed on a virtual banking day, skipping the actual processing of each of the 6 weeks of allowance that was overdue and just posting it to their statements. 

My son has quite a bit of money in his Giving account.  I informed him today that it was use it or lose it time.  He needs to find a cause he wants to support with at least a portion of the $80 that has accumulated there.  I am giving him until the end of the school year to figure out what to do with 50% of the cash, or it all reverts to me to distribute.  This is a hands-on learning exercise after all.

Last note for today - I'm still that guy that has the crazy emergency kits.  This weekend I checked the smoke detector batteries with my battery tester.  Better safe than sorry!

Talk to you later.

Yep, I'm that guy......

You know, the one who has already tested the batteries in the smoke detectors, inventoried the emergency kits in the house and both cars, cleaned out the garage, closets and dresser for things to donate to charity.

Of course, no New Year's weekend would be complete without raise day at the Reed house. For those of you who are new to the blog, the kids each receive $1 per year in age at the start of the year each week in allowance (Don't worry about this being an outrageous amount, they more than pay for it, trust me).

The challenge is now what else to teach them about money this year? Miranda, the 11 year old, will take on the management of a true savings account (a late last year upgrade to her portfolio) as well as managing her summer activity budget. The only fly in the ointment at this point is setting the budget, so its back to the files to figure out what we spent on her last summer. I am sure this will be a larger amount than we realized at the time, so a good exercise for us as well.

Logan, age 9, needs to ease off the gas a bit, and really focus in on the processes we have established, as he has been more than a little shaky in that area (No real shock, as this happens with his homework as well. Nine year old boys, ugh!).

The big picture this year is taking the whole My Kids' Money project off the ground by formally establishing the charity and beginning to solicit donations. I think I have spoken to enough people about this over the last 24 months to be able to pull in the first year capital and get down to the real work of increasing our kids' financial literacy.

Stay tuned for more!