Allowance Secrets – To Give or Not To Give?
As you may know by now, I have a passion to help young people become financially well educated and some while ago I met another entrepreneur on the internet who is also passionate about helping kids with their money.
Let me introduce her:
“Amanda van der Gulik is a homeschooling momepreneur and very savvy young woman who is giving away a terrific e-book called, “Allowance Secrets: To Give Or Not To Give?”, which will help you make up your mind on whether or not to give your kids an allowance.
She has spent months compiling over 200 pages of valuable and helpful information about the financial repercussions of giving your children an allowance, or not.”
Amanda knew that I shared the same vision, although I am focussing more on teenagers upwards and she asked me to write a chapter for her “Allowance Secrets” ebook.
I was extremely flattered to be asked as I am still just getting involved in this area, but I wrote my chapter and I have since had the opportunity to look at this ebook myself.
It is an amazing and thought provoking collection of ideas and suggestions about allowances. Most importantly the overall idea behind the book is that there is no right or wrong answer to this question and that parents should make their own decision about what suits them best.
This is a really useful book which is broken down into various sections so that you can look at the one that suits your own ideas and read what each author has to say, but you can also look at the other sections and have the information to weigh up for yourself.
With the amount of work that has gone into this ebook I am surprised that Amanda has decided to give it away, but she, like me, is passionate about getting this information out to those who need it. By not charging for it she can make sure that those who will benefit from it can have access to it.
I applaud what she has done and I would definitely recommend that you download a copy for yourself or for someone you know who has children or grandchildren – or might be planning to have children!
Here is what Amanda has to say about the book itself – I thought that I would let her own words speak for themselves:
People seem to ask the same questions about kids allowances again and again.
“Should I give my child an allowance?”
“How much should I give my child as an allowance?”
“When should I start giving my child an allowance?”
“Will an allowance ruin my child’s entrepreneurial spirit?”
Allowances are a very touchy subject and it really comes down to each individual’s personal strategies for financial education for their child. Teaching children about money can be very difficult and confusing for the parent as well.
Most of us were raised with the value that “money is evil”, or “you don’t need to have money to be happy.” But have you had a good look around you lately? Can you find me a family who are in a lot of bad debt that are not stressing about their finances? Maybe money doesn’t make you happy but not having money will make you a lot more unhappy, I can tell you that for sure.
Just imagine, you have a recurring income of more than $10,000/month. How would that feel? Would you feel stress-free because you are now able to pay off all of your expenses and thereby not create any bad debt? How will you feel when you have money left over at the end of every month instead of living paycheck to paycheck?
What if you were financially able to give away 10% of your income, every month, without even noticing the financial impact? What would you give it to? Who would you like to help? How would it feel to be able to help others in need with the extra money that you are earning without even feeling the financial impact? It would be a pretty awesome feeling right?
So how does this tie into the topic of allowances?
Some people suggest that allowances are a way to teach their children about money. Others suggest that allowances gives their kids the chance to learn to handle money without losing their shirt.
Here are some of my own suggestions on the topic to get your financial juices flowing.
Maybe when we give our child an allowance it might start to create the feeling of entitlement in our child?
What if by giving our child an allowance we were actually hindering their financially creative minds?
Would they be so used to just getting money that they wouldn’t even bother to come up with creative new ways to earn their own money?
And what about pride of ownership that comes when we are finally able to acquire our dreams by our own means instead of just as a gift from someone else?
These are just a few of the topics discussed in Allowance Secrets.
Allowance Secrets is the ultimate Guide to allowances. Over 20 experts have contributed to this project.
I would love to hear your feedback about this book. Was it useful to you? Did you learn something new? Did it make you change your ideas about allowances? Was anything missing that you would like to see?
I can then pass this feedback on to Amanda so that together we can all help to get the best information out to as many parents and grandparents as possible. After all these will be our future business leader, bankers, politicians etc!
