His advice: Learn together.
Resources abound, if parents know where to look. There are free online materials available, as well as children s books and games that can help.
Online resources
The Council for Economic Education aims to make learning fun with its Family-At-Home Financial Fun Pack. You can download the grade-appropriate pack for your child and get games, activities and worksheets that you can do together. There are also suggestions for books (see more on books, below).
The nonprofit personal finance organization Next Gen Personal Finance also has free online games and activities on topics like investing and budgeting, and the National Endowment for Financial Education has free online courses, learning activities and quizzes.
It s all made her more mindful about money. She and her fiancé plan on refinancing their house so that they can save about $300 a month. The next stimulus checks will be set aside, along with the tax refunds they receive in April. I don t think that we anticipated this lasting as long as it has, Alexander said. We took a lot of stuff for granted.
This is the time of year that many Americans make resolutions or look for ways to reset their lives. In 2021, people are hoping to move on from the pandemic and perhaps become smarter about their money.
After all, it isn t cheap to raise a child. A middle-income couple can expect to spend an average of $233,610 from birth through age 17, according to 2015 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The thing to think about is, what can I get cleared up today and off my financial plate knowing that this tsunami of stress and sleep deprivation is going to hit and probably set me back for six months, said certified financial planner Thomas Henske, partner at New York-based Lenox Advisors.
That s what Chantel Bonneau, 32, set about doing when she was expecting her first child in 2019.