Praise for The 5 Money Conversations to Have with Your Kids at Every Age and Stage
Talking with your kids about money can be a daunting and intimidating task for many parents, but thankfully, Scott and Bethany have given us the tools and insight to make this discussion a bit easier. I am so thankful, as a parent of two teenagers, for their wisdom and candor.
Pastor Brady Boyd
New Life Church Author of Addicted to Busy
Scott and Bethany Palmers The 5 Money Conversations to Have with Your Kids at Every Age and Stage will empower, enable, and equip parents everywhere to talk to their kids about money. And, in addition, we predict this wonderful book will also help parents better understand themselves in the process. We highly recommend it!
Walt and Barb Larimore
Authors of His Brain, Her Brain: How Divinely Designed Differences Can Strengthen Your Marriage
Money is an important part of our spiritual lives. Unfortunately, it is a topic we are often reluctant to discuss. Scott and Bethany Palmers book is a wonderful toolit opens the subject with information, spiritual insight, and common sense. It takes the fear out of a topic that often intimidates. Even if you dont like to read, read this!
Pastor Allen Jackson
Senior pastor World Outreach Church
I am a strong believer in the Money Personality philosophies of Scott and Bethany Palmer. This book focuses on children, but in reality applies to many relationships. I have read their other books, and they have shown me how to strengthen my relationships by understanding the five Money Personalities within each of us. These five money conversations are universal and work with adults, parents, coworkers, and friends.
Bob and Susan Meeder
President/CEO and chief operations officer Meeder Investment Management
What can I say? I love this book! Its the aha moment that so many parents need today! When you understand not only your own Money Personality but your childrens, too, youll be far better equipped to train them in the way they should go, the way God has wired them to be for his purposes. Scott and Bethany have written a handbook that will help you navigate money conversations with your kids: from entitlement to responsibility, from allowances to special activities, from impulse purchases to saving for the future. If youre a parent, youll want to read this book.
Susie Larson
Radio host, national speaker, author of Your Beautiful Purpose
2014 Scott and Bethany Palmer
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by W Publishing Group, an imprint of Thomas Nelson.
Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.
ISBN 978-0-7180-1122-2 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Palmer, Scott, 1971
The 5 money conversations to have with your kids at every age and stage / Scott Palmer and Bethany Palmer.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-8499-6479-4 (paperback)
1. ChildrenFinance, Personal. 2. TeenagersFinance, Personal. I. Palmer, Bethany, 1965 II. Title. III. Title: Five money conversations to have with your kids at every age and stage.
HG179.P18868 2014
332.024dc23
2014020186
14 15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1
We dedicate this book to our kids, Cole and Cade.
Thank you for what you are teaching us about your Money Personalities and how God has created you both so uniquely. We love you both!
Contents
W e are so thankful for the amazing people God has put in our lives. Thank you to all the amazing couples we have worked with over the past year. Thank you for opening up your lives and the lives of your kids to us.
Thank you to Matt Baugher and the amazing team in the W Publishing Group at Thomas Nelson. Thank you for believing in our message and our passion to make families better.
Carla Barnhill continues to be such a great support for us and has helped us shape our message for our readers.
Thank you to our amazing church in Colorado Springs, New Life Church. Pastor Brady Boyd and Pastor Garvin McCarrell are such a huge blessing and support to us.
Our goal is to change families for the betterto help them understand how they can have amazing Money Relationships and strong family ties.
R aise your hand if your parents had the talk with you. No, not that talk. We mean the talk about how to balance a checkbook and manage your savings and plan for the future. Our guess is that there arent many hands in the air.
Those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 80s were as likely to have money conversations with our parents as we were conversations about the birds and the bees. For our parents, the idea that you would intentionally teach your kids about money wasnt really on the radar. Their parentsour Depression-era grandparentsdidnt talk about money, so ours didnt either.
Add to that, most of us came of age in a time when the economic future looked pretty bright. Until recently, every generation has experienced more prosperity than the generation before it. But thats changing. There are conflicting predictions about what the future might be like for our kids, but one thing is for sureour kids are going to need some money smarts to navigate their futures.
We meet with thousands of couples every year to help them sort out their finances. And in the past ten years, weve discovered that the skills people need to figure out their money issues have almost nothing to do with crunching numbers or understanding global markets. Instead, weve found that what couples really need to manage their money is strong communication, the ability to understand each other, and a commitment to putting their relationship above their budget.
The same is true when it comes to helping your kids learn about money. We hear from parents all the time:
My son is so irresponsible with money.
My child spends her allowance on the most useless stuff.
Im sick of my kids begging for toys every time we go to the store.
Our kids expect us to spend a fortune on them at Christmas.
Our son needs to start saving money to help pay for college, but he cant seem to do it.
Parents talk to us about these issues because they want their kids to avoid the money conflicts and anxieties and mistakes theyve dealt with. They worry that if they dont give their kids money management skills now, their kids will bounce checks and run up credit card debt and never have a dime in a savings account. And for the most part, theyre right.
Our kids need us to teach them about money. The skills we need to manage our finances dont come naturally for most of us. So its essential that of the many life skills we pass on to our kids, money management is close to the top of the list. But theres another set of money-related skills that most parents never think about, because most of us dont have those skills ourselves.
Every money problem, every money fight, every money conversation has two layers. The first layer involves the financial detailsyour budget, your savings account, your debt and retirement and college funds and phone bills and parking tickets, and so on. Those are your finances, and thats all important stuff.
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