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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 751: Kids Need More Practice With Money | Dr. Stephen Day, Teach a Kid to Save
00:56:07
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- [00:01]
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- [00:29]
Ginny Urch
Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Urch. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. We're gonna be talking about like an actually critically important thing today that we don't really talk about too much or know how to figure out, which is teaching our kids how to handle money. And the author of Teach a Kid to Save, a fun hands on approach to building smart money habits, Stephen Day is here. Welcome, Stephen.
- [00:51]
Stephen Day
Hi Jeannie. Thanks so much for having me.
- [00:53]
Ginny Urch
Okay, so this is a wild thing. I started to read your book. It's called Teach a Kid to Save. And I'm like, okay, well this is good. Like, you know, we've got five kids, I probably should teach them to save. And it goes into this whole thing about like a mini society. And we totally did that like in elementary school. It's probably one of my favorite parts of elementary school was we had a mini society started in the third grade. You can do it in third, fourth and fifth grade. And like in third grade our teacher was Mrs. Gosh Horn. And so we had these G bucks and like everybody had a classroom job. You know, I'm like, some people's was just to make sure the lights were turned off. And like, I mean, some people was the, it was a treasurer and it was like a whole thing. And then you could sell stuff. Like people would make those like colored sand and then they would like put it in jars and like have all these, you know, it's like these people sold food. I mean, it was like the best, one of the best parts. There would be the tables lined up down the hallways, like in the whole school, and you could go shop with your G bucks. Anyway, I, so I open. That's not what I was expecting the
- [01:50]
Sponsor/Ad Voice 2
book to be about.
- [01:51]
Ginny Urch
And I opened it up and I was like, this is a total flashback to my childhood. Can you give a little bit of backstory here? Because possibly the teachers at this school in Plymouth, Michigan learned about it from your dad.
- [02:02]
Stephen Day
Yeah. And so that, that's kind of the origin story. There's two versions of this program there is Mini Society and one called Mini Economy. And there was a big movement in the 1970s and 80s to really get a mini economy into classrooms, and there were big research studies. My dad jumped on board when he was a fifth grade teacher in the mid-1970s in Indianapolis. Right. In Brownsburg, Indiana. And he made a mini economy in his classroom. And he did it first to kind of manage behavior. But when he got with the Indiana Council on Economic Education, they showed him on how to make a way to teach, on how to provide this opportunity for kids to really demonstrate autonomy and entrepreneurship and to make a little society together. And so he ended up writing it up in this book called the Classroom Mini Economy that's been used by classroom teachers for decades now to have economies in their class. And I train teachers on how to use that as well. The funny thing is when my dad tested these ideas on me and my brothers when we were little. And so this is where I got the idea to write it as a book for parents, because I experienced it as a child. My dad said, well, I'm gonna pilot this with my own kids. And so we had the. The jobs and the. And the household store on the kitchen table and the play money and the coupons. And it was a great experience. And it taught me how to save. So I thought I'd pass it on.
- [03:34]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. So you've taken this and you've taken it into people's individual homes. So this is great for any type of home. You can do it in the summer. Like, you're like, this isn't something have to commit to for the rest of your life, but you could do for six weeks in the summer, or you could do it as an ongoing thing. And what it was, it was really interesting to read about it in the context of parenting because, you know, like, just learning about supply and demand and, like, are you creating value for somebody else? Like, these are all parts of life that, you know, it's like you only kind of look at the. You know, did you save this much percent? Did you give this much percent? But, like, how an economy actually works. And I wouldn't have considered Stephen taking this mini Society concept where there's 30 kids in a classroom and bringing it to a home where there's two kids or four kids or whatever the situation is. So this is a great tool for people to use. The book is called Teach a Kid to Save. Tell us what you do. You know, you just wrote this book just came out. Tell us what you do for your job.
- [04:35]
Stephen Day
Okay. So I Teach economics at Virginia Commonwealth University and I work with the Virginia Council on Economic education to do K12 teacher training. So I show teachers how to teach economics and personal finance.
- [04:48]
Ginny Urch
Okay, what do you teach? Like what? Like someone? Because I think I took one economics class. The thing I remember most about economics is about opportunity cost. Because I was like, oh, yeah. I mean, this is the thing. You can't have everything, so you got to pick and choose. But is this like entry level or is this people that are like super interested in it and so they're going into careers?
- [05:08]
Stephen Day
Oh, well, I'll, I'll put it in the terms that I put it in, in the book. All right. And is that we want to teach kids how to make values based choices over time. And economics is ultimately the study of how people make choices. And your economics class probably got a more complicated version of it, which is, I think, why people are scared of their econ class. But for me, it's trying to make really clear how people make choices, how we can make better choices, and how we can understand what our own choices are. Like, what's motivating us. You know, I think some of us are just caught in a swirl of why do I even, why do I even do what I do? And so I don't want parents to be intimidated by the, by the conversation. You know, pretty much what we're doing here is instead of having a classroom economy where there's all these kids have jobs, it's the kids and the parents are involved where. And it's just basically a way for you start by your chores. Everyone in the family, including the parents, get paid in play money. And then you set up a little household store where you can sell items and privileges. It's also a way to sort of manage the kids. When the kids ask you for extra stuff that the parents often say no to, sometimes the parents say yes to. This allows the kids a little bit more choice making and autonomy over how valuable that is to them. You know, are they going to spend their hard earned household money to get, you know, to get some privilege that they wouldn't always get?
- [06:43]
Ginny Urch
So, yeah, right. You know what it is in, in our house, it would be like to play games at the fair. I'm like, we're not playing games at the fair. Those are a waste of your money, you know, but like, they want to do it anyway. They're like, I will get, I will do that ring toss. I'm like, nobody's won the ring toss. You know, you're not going to do that.
- [07:00]
Stephen Day
Exactly.
- [07:01]
Ginny Urch
To climb the ladder up to the top because the ladder moves, you're going to fall off, you know, but they want to do it. So like that's a good situation where. And then they're tying that to what they put in toward getting that money instead of just taking someone else's money.
- [07:15]
Stephen Day
Yeah, we did that exactly. The fair. Exactly. Because they will take all of your money. We, we sometimes we sell adventure coupons because, you know, we. You have four kids in my family and they always want to have to do different things. Um, and they also want snacks. When we go out and it's expensive, I say, no, we're not going to stop by to get the donut. No, we have to do things that everybody likes. One of the coupons they can buy is to. To go off on a solo adventure with dad where they get a snack and they get to say what we do. And so my now 11 year old Calvin, I think when he was 8 or 9, he said, I want to go to the Petersburg National Battlefield and you have to play battle with me down there. And so we drove. We were living in Richmond, Virginia, so we drove down to. Near the Battle of the crater site and he said, here's your stick. You need to, you know, you need to fight me at this fort. So here I am yelling, bang. There's tourists who look really concerned. The park rangers look displeased. But this is what Calvin really wanted, you know.
- [08:24]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. So then that's motivating for them. And you. The book goes into a lot of the nuance of it. Right. Which is like, okay, you, you would talk about then also you don't want your kids to feel like they have to pay for time with you. But this is maybe for like special instances or something that they. You actually had a good phrase in here. It was like for the times when you would maybe say not now. And I thought that was actually really good wording because I think a lot of us are like, well, yeah, I'll, you know, I'll do that. I'll. I would do that thing with my kid, but. But not now. So they can buy this coupon so that it is now and they can enjoy it sooner rather than maybe waiting for it. So a lot of the nuances then of that are in this book. Teach kid to save. So here's what you say. We model how to read. We model how to wash disses and play baseball. But we rarely model or we don't at all model how to use money and to make financial Decisions, especially because we're dealing with larger sums. And then you say, kids need a lot of practice if they are to master a skill. Talk about how, like, I mean, it is true, and obviously you're teaching this, but, like, I mean, in some cases, you get zero practice.
- [09:30]
Stephen Day
Yeah. I think there's a number of barriers that parents face to teach their kids about money. One of them is that parents just earn way more money than kids do. My kids have a very difficult time understanding how I can earn several thousand dollars a month. And then when they say, can we buy this ice cream? Or whatever? I say, no, we don't have enough money to buy stuff we want all the time. And they just do not believe it. Like, you could with that, you could buy as much ice cream as you want. So it's difficult to model when you have such different amounts of money. I think also some parents don't know what to say. Some parents know about money, but they don't know how to make it age appropriate. Some parents are embarrassed about their finance finances. A lot of parents. And so they don't want to have that conversation about money with their kids. Kids, when the kids might ask difficult questions. And, you know, we're in debt.
- [10:24]
Ginny Urch
Yeah.
- [10:25]
Stephen Day
And also some people grew up in families where money is this very private thing. You know, we. We don't talk about it. It's not polite. Dad takes care of it, and that's it, you know?
- [10:34]
Ginny Urch
Yeah.
- [10:34]
Stephen Day
But all that makes it difficult for kids to make good choices about money when they turn 18 or when they're out of the house.
- [10:44]
Sponsor/Ad Voice 2
Yeah.
- [10:44]
Stephen Day
The thing about having a little play money economy is that it takes the pressure off of all those things. You know, parents and kids are earning the same amount of play money. They're seeing the choices that each other make. They're seeing their siblings choices. They're seeing their parents spending and saving choices. And so it takes all the pressure off these things, and you can actually have those conversations flow.
- [11:07]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. It's important. And life is expensive. We did our oldest at 17, so we did this. It's like, why can I not think? Okay, so the lady, her name's Hannah Maruyama. It's called this. It's called Degree Free. She has a podcast. I love it. And it's just about, like, how to get on in life. Once you graduate from high school, what are your options? You know, college is an option, but there's other options too. And in light of economics and opportunity costs, you know, if degrees cost this much money and you don't actually need one. Like, maybe you would be better served to try something else. But anyway, within her whole program, she, she has this workbook that you can do and you go through a budget and, you know, we went through this with our oldest son and it was just like remarkable how many, how many things there are because you're like, you really are not going to be able to support yourself at, you know, if you work, if you choose to work at Taco Bell, it's like, probably not going to work out. And you really had a clear understanding of that. So life is expensive. And I think this starts to give your kids a perspective. Like, my mom made me save 50% of every. My mom and dad, like, we had to say 50% of whatever money we got, even our Christmas money. I was like, this is lame because we did not get much Christmas money, Stephen. My grandparents, I only had one set of grandparents that gave us Christmas money. Do you know some people get Christmas money from, like their aunts. They got tons of grandparents. They got all these family. Anyways, we would get $20. I had to save it. I had to save 10 of it. And it never got any more. I'd be like, grandma, it is, you know, it's like 2000, you know, or whatever.
- [12:40]
Stephen Day
You sound like you're, you sound like you're really holding on to that.
- [12:43]
Ginny Urch
Give us more than 20 doll. Dad did increase our allowance. Our allowance was 50 cents in kindergarten, and every year you got an extra quarter. So we had that so that there was some increase there, but not from the grandparents. 20 bucks. But my point is we had to save 10 of it. And I think that was super helpful. My mom would even remind me, like when I was in college, she's like, are you saving your money? Are you saving your money? So it was helpful because I think at least half your money goes to bills, at least. And you get this sense that I don't get to spend everything that comes in. So life is expensive. And you say kids don't get enough practice with money. Kids need to practice making meaningful choices about money over time. So one of the things that happens in the home mini economy is that there are taxes. Yeah, talk about that.
- [13:28]
Stephen Day
Yeah. So there's responsibilities with your money. The idea is not to teach the kids a bunch of head knowledge about money. The. The idea is to build practice, is to give kids opportunity for regular practice making meaningful choices about money. And I think that with a real money allowance, the kids get some practice, but for me, not enough. That's why it's. It's nice to make this little home system where you have many more reps, to use a sports term, many more opportunities where the kids and parents can freely have these conversations. So when the kids get money, we have the, the classic buckets, Share, save, spend. Some people put share last. I put share first. You know, we, the, the money goes to church. That's our tithe money. And that's not negotiable. We train the kids to do that first. Then yeah, we have. The taxes are something that we all consume together as a family. We, we say, what do we want to get together? And in fact, that trip to the county fair, that's outrageously expensive where we're in real life. Like normally I'm constantly saying no to everything. Cause I'm like, that's a ripoff. That's a ripoff. This is a ripoff. But we can, but we do tax money to save up for to go to the fair. Actually what we're saving for right now as a family is to go to the amusement park, to go to Kings Dominion where there's lots of, lots of waste there too. But you know, we're going to, it's, it's going to be amazing. And we're going to, that's going to be our family goal. So the kids, they do their giving, they pay their taxes. That's optional. You don't have to do that if you want. And then they have to save a certain amount. They have a goal that they save to, towards. But the habit that this forms right here is to let kids know, like when our family gets money, we have responsibilities. You know, a lot of that money is spoken for. And it doesn't just go right into your pocket and then straight out to the toy aisle in Target, you know, which is the example I give in the book. So again, it's about developing habits. And you can develop habits if you have a context in which the kids can practice.
- [15:42]
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- [19:24]
Stephen Day
And so one other part about that though is I don't think a lot of kids get a lot of practice being producers.
- [19:30]
Ginny Urch
Exactly.
- [19:31]
Stephen Day
Sometimes they get practice as consumers. But when the kids can make little home businesses or when they make choices about which jobs to do at home, when they vote on taxes or when they decide their saving or spending choices, again, that allows them to wrap in the value of their work and they become advocates for themselves as they, as they practice negotiating on the value of the work and making choices over time.
- [19:56]
Ginny Urch
About that, one of the stories that you told about being a producer, which I mean, I, I thought that that was, I mean really the differentiator here is that this is an economy where money flows, it circulates. The wording you use is the money circulates through the house and the kids can see how it flows. And allowance is different. And allowance is like, I got money, I can spend it if I want, you know, or maybe you do the envelopes with your allowance too. I mean, we had to, like I
- [20:20]
Stephen Day
said, which is good. I support the envelopes.
- [20:23]
Ginny Urch
I had to save a quarter of my 50 cents. You know, like, I think that's a good practice to be in and actually I got married. You know, I had some money that we were able to use for, you know, house down payment or furniture or whatever, those types of things. So the differentiator here, though, is that now you're. You're looking outward as to what do people need and what might someone buy from me or what service might they hire me for, which is, I think, a conversation or a thought process that might never happen in childhood. And really, that's what business is about, which is, what are the needs in the world and. And how can I fill them? And so you told this story about how you're like, okay, we're going to do the classic lemonade stand. And your dad was like, you're going to have to pay me for supplies. Can you talk about that?
- [21:08]
Stephen Day
Yeah. So we had the lemonade stand, and we were out there in the hot sun all day. My mom and dad were doing a yard sale at the same time, and we made, you know, several dollars. You know, this is the mid to late 1980s, and we were pretty happy with it. My dad says, how much money did you make? And we said, we made $10. This is great. My dad says, and how much did your resources cost? I said, what? He said, how much did the lemonade cost? I said, it was free. We got it from the pantry. You know, he shakes his head, no, no, no, no, that wasn't free. That costs anything. And you needed to. You need to buy that. And I remember my mom. I remember vividly my mom sort of sidling up next to him and going, harlan, do you think that maybe we can just let them keep the full amount this time? And he was appalled. My dad was like, absolutely not. This is the time for kids to understand that to business and risks. So we had to pay them back for the lemonade and our profit after we divided it, I think it was three ways at this point, was so low at this point, we didn't make very much money. But I learned that there was risk in investment and there is risk in
- [22:12]
Ginny Urch
business, and you have to weigh out your cost. I mean, it's a really big deal. Like, we sell merchandise, and it's like, okay, okay, what do we have to factor in? Like, you have to factor in the merchandise itself, but you also have to factor in shipping materials, and you have to factor in shipping costs, and you have to factor in returns, and you have to factor in the times when you make mistakes because you sent a 3T and they actually had ordered a 4T and you messed up. Like, there is a lot there to think about. And so to start at a young age to realize there is a cost often associated with doing business. And you have to figure out one of the things you said in the book was that often a child will undervalue. So maybe they're going to be like, I'm going to make the coffee every morning or I'm going to do X, Y or Z. And they, they price too low.
- [22:58]
Stephen Day
Yeah, well, it's amazing that the kids so much of the, the choices that they make are very constrained choices because we, you know, we give them a lot of rules. You know, they, they have less, fewer constraints when they're playing outside, as you know, when they are doing the free play with each other. But the things that they do in the classic chores and jobs that they do, this is all really pretty top down when you think about it. The parents assign the chores. The parents are really the ones deciding everything that happens. A bit more advanced mini economy. You can have the kids make businesses. So we have businesses in our household which we started a bit later on. And the kids are flabbergasted when they find out that they are the bosses of the business. What's the price? They decide what should they make. Well, that's the thing. They're not entirely the boss of that because they have customers to please. And this is not just I'm making my art project because I like to do art. I'm doing this because I like to do it. You actually have to find the other people in your community and say, what do you actually want? How can I serve you? You know, and people have, you have to serve people's interests if they're going to open up their wallets and pay you for anything. And so this is a completely different experience for kids. They don't get this in school really to be the bosses for a change. And they learn to advocate for themselves. They experience a whole new level of autonomy. I think. Yeah, I'm a little afraid. This sounds like a lot and overwhelming to the listeners right now in the book and teach a kid to save. I give a quick start guide at the very beginning and then there's one little page that says, look, if you just want to do a little two week project, do it. Like this doesn't have to take over your whole life. It's easy to sample and it'll give you some principles to take away no matter what you decide to do going forward because it's flexible.
- [24:53]
Ginny Urch
Sure. I can see though, as a business owner, like this is really valuable and the part where you are trying to figure out like what, what if you go to the next level where you create your own business? Because this is really level two. Like this is a huge skill. It's in a low stakes way. You say explain to them that they get to choose what price to charge. It should be low enough that people will pay for it with their fake money. Your family money, whatever yours is called day bucks. In third grade my ours was called G bucks. But high enough that it's worth their time spent doing the extra work. That is a huge skill to have and you know something that you can practice then whenever you do it, if you do it for a short period of time, or if you do it for a long period of time, it's really important for kids. Can you talk about the fact that. So that's an extra. Right. So that extra step is to have kids do businesses, whether that's service, service things or making things. But you say just for the regular jobs in the house. Would you really go into like should kids have chores? Should they be paid for chores? It's a whole thing so people can read about that. But this could be their chores or it could be extra beyond their chores. You can go one way or the other. But you say to give the jobs names. Can you talk about some examples of
- [26:09]
Sponsor/Ad Voice 2
that and why that's important?
- [26:11]
Stephen Day
Yeah, I think it starts with the age old debate of whether kids should be paid for chores. Like when I devote a chapter and a half to discussing that. I really tried to go into more detail than that than I think people are used to so that they can really make a choice. But I encourage parents to categorize jobs into three kinds. There's family work, which is what people, which is what the kids do just because they're part of the family. And it's maintaining the household. It's a responsibility. They don't get paid for that. And then their jobs have job titles where they're making something new. They do get paid for this and it gives parents an opportunity to teach the kids about the connection between work and money and our choices and goals. And then I also add service work, which is what we do for other people. This is often through church or for community or things like that to let kids know they have to do that. So a business is one of the things they get paid for and for their, their jobs, their mini economy jobs, you work with them to make a household job and then they get paid. That's kind of the, the top down classic allowance thing. Their businesses are things where you. The kids require help with that, you know, sometimes because they're not used to it. They need a little bit of guidance in making a household business. But they should be. They, they will negotiate with price on you. I'm in price negotiation with two different kids right now. One of them for Robbie for making the coffee. And he always wants a higher price and he's willing to cut me off of coffee, his coffee making business, if I don't pay him enough. And then also my other two kids are making little self published books and they write them in cursive by hand, that's the length of a young adult novel. And we publish them through a self publishing website. But they require editing help and graphics help. I'm good at editing, my wife is good with the graphics. And so we make them pay us for that too.
- [28:09]
Ginny Urch
Well, wait, tell us a little bit more about those. What are they called?
- [28:12]
Stephen Day
Oh, well, my daughter Daisy, she's 13, she's written a fan fiction book based on the warriors series. And she's read all the warriors books a bunch of times. And she wanted to know what if she and her friends had become. Had were cats that lived in the woods. So she wrote.
- [28:28]
Ginny Urch
Oh, it's a warrior cats.
- [28:29]
Stephen Day
Yeah, warrior.
- [28:30]
Ginny Urch
We are huge fans of the warrior cats. Yeah, There are like 600 Warrior Cats books.
- [28:36]
Stephen Day
There's so many.
- [28:36]
Ginny Urch
There's so many. And it's like this has babies and this one and I'm like. And then my daughter, who's really into it is like this one die. It's always the one she really loves dies. And like all. There's just like the next generation of cats. I was like, whoever came up with that is brilliant. They probably have sold millions of books.
- [28:55]
Stephen Day
Well, my daughter, she wrote this story about she and her friends. They are mad at their parents so they run away from home and in the woods they find a wand that turns them into warrior cats. And so it's sort of like her daydream. And it's been popular at her school. All the kids are reading it.
- [29:14]
Ginny Urch
What's it called?
- [29:15]
Stephen Day
Her book is called the Calling woods and it's very well written if you ask me. I think it's a great.
- [29:21]
Ginny Urch
The Collingwoods. Where can people get it? On Amazon?
- [29:23]
Stephen Day
You know, we haven't. Well, it's not nowhere actually. I mean, shoot, they could email me. I'd be happy to get more copies made. But we haven't sold it publicly. You know, it's just like a thing for her and her friends. She sold it at school, but you
- [29:34]
Ginny Urch
self published it to where you have physical copies. Yeah, put it on Amazon. It's so easy. Do you know all you do is buy an ISBN? It's like 50 bucks.
- [29:43]
Stephen Day
Bucks. Yeah, we have an ISB, we have an ISBN. It's just not.
- [29:46]
Ginny Urch
Then all you do is send a crate of them into Amazon and they
- [29:50]
Sponsor/Ad Voice 2
hold on to them and then when
- [29:51]
Ginny Urch
you need another one, they send you an email.
- [29:52]
Stephen Day
Well, I just didn't click the button that said make it available on Amazon, you know, I just said, well, it's just for. It's just for us. Us and the family and friends. But no, maybe you're right, you know.
- [30:01]
Ginny Urch
Oh my goodness. The Collingwoods. I mean, my kids one. At least my one daughter would want to read it by. Daisy Day. Yeah, and that's a cool name. Nick. She's got an author name already. Daisy Day. Okay. All right.
- [30:13]
Stephen Day
My other son, my. My son Calvin, he wrote one called the Blue Belted Hero and it's about warrior mutants. And he's got a follow up one called the Raid of the Dragons. And it's. There's a lot of fighting in it. And the. And so he's selling that at school too. Okay, Please put them online. Oh yeah. You think so?
- [30:31]
Ginny Urch
I think so. Everybody needs new books to read.
- [30:34]
Stephen Day
They sure.
- [30:34]
Ginny Urch
Tell them they can come on my podcast if they get them on Amazon. No, we'll talk about them.
- [30:38]
Stephen Day
All right, we'll talk.
- [30:40]
Ginny Urch
What a cool thing. I mean, in this day and age. I actually think that's a really good idea that you brought up though. It's interesting, Stephen, in this day and age, anybody can self publish and you can get your book out there and people like it, word of mouth and you sell some and you make a little bit of money. Our daughter, who is nine, wrote these books about going outside. I was like, this is really on brand. And she was like. We were selling flowers like in the summer. It never worked actually because it rained. It was a pain. It was a pain. We were trying to sell flower bouquets out in the front and of our house. And then she was like, I'm gonn write these comics and I'm gonna charge a dollar for people to read it while they're standing here buying their flowers. And I was like, good luck. But you know, I think anyone do it?
- [31:18]
Stephen Day
I think that's a great idea.
- [31:19]
Ginny Urch
Well, we got rained out and then we never tried again. So I think it was an interesting idea because I don't think that someone would do it. And I think that that's Actually good experience because that's the whole point of the thing is like, well, you could create an entire business, you could create a product. If nobody buys it, you've wasted your time. And so you have to be pretty smart about these things. And that's the whole point of the book, which is whatever level you take it to, your mini economy, your kids are just getting a lot of practice with making choices, values based choices. So there's information here on the jobs. There could be a zookeeper, a librarian, a ruler of the toys. And you talk about how job titles help create identity around the work. But then you also have this extra idea where if they get a new, if they earn a new skill, this is the world of work. This is true, you know, in most business settings, if they learn a new skill, they can get a raise.
- [32:16]
Stephen Day
Yeah, well, a lot of the jobs that we give kids, a lot their chores don't require skill. You know, we give them jobs that are clean up, that are drudgery. And when you think about it, and then we get, we get frustrated with our kids sometimes when they don't want to do their chores and we're like, ah, well, they're, they're, you know, they're lazy, they need to be taught how to work. But you know, like, I don't like to do the boring parts of my job. In fact, I have some very intellectually engaging parts of my job. You know, my job motivates me because it requires skill, because it's aligned with my values, because I know that it helps people. And so I think that we might come down on kids a little hard when we give them jobs that they don't understand why it's important. It doesn't require any skill. It's drudgery. And it's just, they're in their room cleaning their room. You know, I really recommend giving kids jobs that require skill, a new tool to use. And then as they learn new skills and as they learn how to use tools, they become actually more productive. Like you can see the work being better, they gain pride in their work and then, yeah, they deserve a raise, you know, because they, because they're being more productive. A mini economy is not about rule following. Kids shouldn't get paid for following rules. You know, in real life, no one pays you for following the rules. You know, that's, you just, you just get not fined or not go to jail if you follow the rules, you know. But we get paid because we make useful things for people and we trade them away for money and that's why we get paid and so we live in a skill based economy and kids should learn and practice that as they that their skills are valuable, that their time is valuable. They should advocate for themselves and learn and practice how to how to make these deals in the market because their work is valuable. So yeah, give them a raise if they learn a new skill. They deserve it.
- [34:13]
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Ginny Urch
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- [37:38]
Ginny Urch
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Ginny Urch
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- [37:46]
Ginny Urch
all right, give us some examples, Stephen. So, yeah, my creativity is not going anywhere.
- [37:50]
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- [37:51]
Stephen Day
Yeah. I should give more examples. My son Robbie, he said, I remember, he goes, today was an awesome day. And I'm thinking, what did we do today? We gave them double jobs this day that he declared to be an awesome day. Well, what were the jobs? He was outside with me. We were building a platform to, to put a shed on. We had gotten a shed and we needed a platform for it. And so we had to take out all these bushes in the side yard. And so the bushes were cut down. We had to dig them out. So we had shovels and we were just digging deep down. And we learned about roots. You know, he had, I said, we've cut all the roots. How come the thing is selling well? There's a tap root. Well, what's the tap root? Well, it goes deep Down. He got a cut that's trying to hold it in. And so we were hacking away at these roots forever. And then we had to start to lay the foundation. And the boys were asking, you know, can we use. Can I use your reciprocating saw? I let them use my reciprocating saw. It's dangerous. You know, they. But I taught them safety standards. I supervised them. They were so proud of themselves. They thought it was so cool. By the end of the day, they'd use two or three new tools that they'd never used to used before. I mean, those are great jobs right there. It builds pride. I actually needed the help. You know, these kids are now, you know, they were 10 and 8 years old at the time. Yeah, they deserve to be paid for that, you know.
- [39:20]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. You wrote some of the work that kids do around the house is actually valuable. The adults get paid for doing valuable work. Why shouldn't the kids get paid for their valuable work too? I remember the last time that we moved and our oldest was 11, and I mean, he legitimately helped us move. I was like, we would not have gotten this piece of furniture in the house without his help. And so you're like, as they get older, I'm like, my brain is like, will somebody meal plan for me? And I think, yes, I think somebody could do that. And that's a skill and it really would help the family. So there's a lot of ideas here about that. And then I loved in the. Throughout the book, there's all these questions. So questions for the parents. Actually, it's at the end of every single chapter. The book is called Teach a Kid to Save. Fun Hands on approach. A fun hands on approach to building smart money habits. So there's questions for parents and questions for children and lessons for children. So a lot of things that maybe you've not considered. This is coming from Stephen Day, who teaches economics and also helps students from K to 12. That's a big range learn economics and personal finance. So here's a question. I'm going to ask you the question because I actually don't know the answer for myself, but I've been mulling it over. If. And this is an example of something that's in the book. If you wanted to buy something expensive, would you rather save more or work more?
- [40:36]
Stephen Day
Yeah. When I asked that question to my kids, they didn't really understand the question. But when I changed the question to if you wanted to get more money, would you spend less at our household store or would you do more Jobs, they all of a sudden got it. And so that's why I think it's important to have a context or, you know, this system that I describe in the book, because it makes these conversations so much easier. You're not just teaching these abstract lessons to kids. They're in the moment all the time. They need new knowledge in order to make money choices. My boys, by the way, they came to completely opposite conclusions. The younger one, Robbie, said, well, I would. I would spend less. You know, I would. But the older one, Calvin, who was 10 at the time, said, just give me more jobs, you know, and he would do it like that. And they debated about it in the car on the way to soccer practice. And I'll tell you what, like, they had a deeper understanding of money and how and its practices by the time they got to soccer practice.
- [41:39]
Ginny Urch
What's your answer?
- [41:41]
Stephen Day
I'm kind of conservative with money. I usually. I would just spend less. For me, it's easy.
- [41:46]
Ginny Urch
Okay.
- [41:47]
Stephen Day
One thing I've noticed, when I talk to the entrepreneurs, I asked this question at the men's retreat at church to someone.
- [41:53]
Ginny Urch
Good question.
- [41:54]
Stephen Day
Yeah. The entrepreneurs at church, they said, oh, increase income easy, 100%. Do it. They both said, 100% too. Yeah. So you had some, you know, some guys who are just all hustle who say, oh, yeah, just increase your income. Just do it. No problem. But for all the salaried guys like me, we said, oh, well, you decrease your spending.
- [42:17]
Ginny Urch
I mean, I totally would land in the work more. I mean, we have a podcast that comes out every single day. And I just talked to you, a guy, he was like, what are you doing? And I was like, we got five kids. And like, you know, I'm like, we're hustling now.
- [42:30]
Stephen Day
Jenny, I. I would have guessed that you would have been the. The work more, increase income person. I was bewildered when these guys said, well, you can always increase your income. And I was. I was like, no, you can't. I don't do that.
- [42:44]
Ginny Urch
But you know what? It's a great question, because there's no wrong answer.
- [42:48]
Stephen Day
Right. Exactly.
- [42:49]
Ginny Urch
You know, I had a. I've had a person on our podcast twice. Her name is Mandy. Mandy. And she goes by Plan D. Mandy on social media. And she is in the same spot, like, talking about, like, we've got this fixed income. And so she's like, the only way that we can make our money go further is to spend less. So she started to make all their food from scratch, including their snacks. I think the package snacks really add up. So she's like, I want to make these. You know, I make all of the granola bars at the beginning of the month. I make all the muffins. I freeze everything. And then she started selling these meal plans hands, and they have exploded. I mean, she, like, walks how to do it. She cooks a meal. They eat it for two days in a row. I mean, it's a whole thing. But that. And then she was like, well, then we have money to go on vacation. So the whole point of it was to spend less in order to have more. So you're like, it works either way. The. I think the point is these are really interesting questions. And by having a mini economy, you have a framework. Then like you. You said earlier to talk about it with your kids because, you know, one of the options or one of the things that you talked about was like, everybody wanted a trampoline. So, okay, well, everybody could double their taxes.
- [43:55]
Stephen Day
Yeah. And we did. We increased. We. We voted as a family that we were going that last summer, we were going to buy a trampoline that was going to be our family savings goal. And so we, the kids really wanted it. So we increased the tax rate. We voted on that. And we were able to save up and buy the trampoline. And then promptly there was a storm and a tree branch landed on it. No. Oh, no.
- [44:20]
Ginny Urch
That's a life lesson, isn't it? That is a life lesson. Sometimes you work really hard and things don't work out. Here's another question for children. So actually, even if you just like to have good, deep conversations with your kids, there is a lot in this book. Teach a kid to save. And Justin Whitmill, early people are huge fans of his is. He's been on our show a couple times. He wrote the four to this one. They do the. The mini economy too, in their family. He was talking about Lauren setting up their store. What. He also talked about some sort of a cardboard statue.
- [44:49]
Stephen Day
Yeah, my son Calvin, his business won it. Well, aside from writing a book, he. He also makes these little cardboard statues and cardboard figures. He's really good at it. And he sells them at school. He gives them his gifts. And my wife, she stitches. She has a little stitching business called Made by Day. And she. And she sells them on. At our local markets and on Instagram. And she had a little corner for his little. His little soldiers. His cardboard soldiers. And they sold a bunch. I mean, everybody wants them. I mean, it's something at the, at the craft market for boys to look at.
- [45:26]
Ginny Urch
Yeah, no, no, Kidding. When there's usually nothing for boys. I mean, that's a really good example of filling a need, you know, and the kids, I mean, the. You know, my husband would talk about that. He's like, I get dragged along with my mom, you know, he's like, I hated it. You know, we go to Joann Fabrics or whatever, and again, dragged along to all these different craft shows. So that's something where a kid can see a need that's really in a situation where you can increase your income, you can work more, you can sell more copies of your books.
- [45:56]
Stephen Day
Can I tell you, Jeanne, there's a couple principles to, to pull out of this. You know, I'm. One thing that I've learned, in fact, I've learned it since I published the book, so it's not in the book. Is that a lot of the structures that I've put up around my kids spending involve, like, everything should just be done according to a plan. You know, good spending is planned spending. We know we sell privilege coupons, but we don't allow the kids to just pull money out of their pocket and buy a coupon if they want a privilege. Right now. It's not part of the plan. You know, you buy the coupon at the store, and that makes you think ahead of time, what you want. When you, when we walk into a store, we just say, is it on the list? What things do we need here? You know, once you're in the store, don't let the store tell you what to buy.
- [46:42]
Ginny Urch
Costco does that.
- [46:43]
Stephen Day
Yeah, good spending is planned spending. And if you want to be spontaneous, well, you know, plan for that too.
- [46:49]
Ginny Urch
You did say that. You said if you want to be spontaneous, you got to save more.
- [46:53]
Stephen Day
Yeah, yeah, plant. You know, you got to have your spontaneity money sort of set to the side.
- [46:57]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. We've talked a lot about all these fun ideas, but at the, at the end of it, and this is really clear in the book, the book is called Teach a Kid to Save that this is about values. So you say parents are teaching facts about money. Yes, but they are teaching so much more. They're teaching how to think about money and like, what is your vision and stewardship and generosity and self control and justice and work and rest? I mean, there's a lot here giving. It's like how the, the main gist is how do you manage the resources that you have toward the goal of living? Well, that's. That's the gist of the book. And that is the lesson that I think is often lost throughout childhood because we're not having these conversations. And the mini economy is a fun way to have all of this practice. And then these questions are really good questions like what is some work that you enjoy? I mean, I think that's a great question. I think we so often look at work as drudgery. I mean, so that's like an almost like an odd question you wouldn't be expected to answer. Like, oh, what do I enjoy? Oh yeah, well, there are things about this that I enjoy. Why might you get paid for some jobs but not others? What things do you think grownups save for? Maybe interesting to know what a kid would say to that, you know. So anyway, the whole point is like we have to decide what's important for us in life. And in order to do that and get involves conversations about your finances.
- [48:13]
Stephen Day
Yeah, I think that kids, the kids need practice sort of aligning their values, their goals, the work they do, and then their plans for what and how they're going to meet their goals, you know?
- [48:26]
Sponsor/Ad Voice 2
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- [48:26]
Stephen Day
I think that a lot of times kids have pretty circumscribed lives where they don't get a chance to make meaningful choices about money and work over time.
- [48:34]
Sponsor/Ad Voice 2
Yeah.
- [48:35]
Stephen Day
And so the in teach a kid to save. We just, I try to put but parents to give kids a context where they can make more of those choices, especially pertaining to money, so that by the time they are 18 years old and they're can be on their own and, and there's credit card companies, you
- [48:52]
Ginny Urch
know, they're gonna have a hard time being on their own at 18. Stuff is so expensive.
- [48:56]
Stephen Day
I know, but you know what? Like there's companies that are say, hey, we'll loan you any amount of money. Right.
- [49:01]
Ginny Urch
Oh gosh.
- [49:02]
Stephen Day
And if kids don't have habits in place to know that when they get new money it's spoken for, so they live within their means, then they could, you know, they can fall victim to that. And so we want them to be prepared.
- [49:14]
Ginny Urch
Yeah, that's a really important point. You talk about debt in here because one of the things was, it was that they got the trampoline early and they were going to like pay it back. And you, you talk about like saying no to debt. It leaves you with nothing to aspire to. How much better to have a goal to work towards. Savings is better. I never really understood that. It's like, you know, you buy something on a credit card, you're not planning on paying for it. It's like, well, that's just going to Cap you off the next, next month. You know, it's, I never really understood why anybody would do that.
- [49:45]
Stephen Day
I didn't. I, I learned that lesson also with, I learned that lesson in this episode with the trampoline. So we said earlier that we bought a trampoline using the family tax money. That's not entirely true because we wanted that we, the parents, wanted the kids to have the trampoline at the beginning of the summer. But our mini economy was just going to be a summer project. We weren't doing it during the school year. So I said, well, here's what you can do, kids. If you save up a down payment, then we can buy the trampoline, then you can pay it off with tax money the rest of the summer. So they got the trampoline pretty quickly. My then 12 year old Daisy donated her entire savings. She just wanted it. But then quickly the kids didn't want to do their jobs. They said, we've got the trampoline already. They had nothing to aspire to. And I threatened to repo the trampoline.
- [50:36]
Ginny Urch
This got serious.
- [50:38]
Stephen Day
Yeah, I know I was going to repossess it. So I threatened to do that and the kids got back to work. But I mean, it really landed on me that if, when you're, when you are in debt, if you're trying to pay those credit cards back, it's so much less motivating because your only goal is just getting out of debt. You don't get something neat at the end of those payments. You know, if, yeah, nothing.
- [51:01]
Ginny Urch
And you don't even know what it was. It's like what this sweater I bought three months ago at Costco. Like you don't even know what the thing is.
- [51:08]
Stephen Day
Yeah, yeah. So we learned. I, I used to, I used to allow debt in the mini economy because I wanted the kids to learn how to manage it. But it's, it, you can tell how it distorts their incentives and their thinking pretty quickly. So I, I insist on saving now. And the book is called Teach a Kid to Save. So I mean, yeah, I probably should do that.
- [51:28]
Ginny Urch
Yeah, you're right. That saving is really just spending we put off until later. And it's okay to set a mandatory weekly saving rate. I'm glad that my mom, she, I remember, I, I remember being old, like an older teen and her saying, are you saving? And I think I had slipped and I like really wasn't. And I was kind of annoyed. I was like, come on. But you know, I'm like so glad that that was the Habit. Because you wrote that saving also teaches us that we don't really have as much money as we think we do. When we factor in that, you know, you got to save for emergencies and you might want something bigger down the road, and then you just have this habit. So one of the things you said, I was like, oh, gosh. You said, when I was a kid, I never, ever expected. Okay, this is a huge statement, Stephen, because we are in a day and age of instant gratification, and there's stuff everywhere. When I was a kid, I never, ever expected my parents to buy things on impulse. They had trained me so well. So literally yesterday, I was at a museum with our youngest daughter, and I bought her a mood ring. And it was $2.80 plus tax, and it was on impulse, you know, And I. I think sometimes two things change, like, as you like, for our older kids. I don't think I ever would have done that because we didn't have any money. I was like, hardly. We hardly had enough for groceries. So I was like, I mean, nobody's getting mood rings, but, like, I can spend $2.80 on a mood ring today. So I. You know, it's. That's an interesting setup for a family. I mean, I think it's probably uncommon. A whole. Our whole world is set up for impulse purchases.
- [53:00]
Stephen Day
I don't want to give my parents too much credit. I was the first child, so they were broke. We lived in student housing, you know, but I only oatmeal for breakfast for years. And then my little brothers got, like. Got like, Captain Crunch and everything, the sugary cereal. So I. I think us first children, we have it rough. But. Yeah, but you know what, though? I. The impulse buys. When you impulse buy, so I'm not. No judgment, Ginny, but if you impulse buy stuff for your kids, it's not that they're not. Not learning that they can do impulse buys. They're learning that they can bug you to do impulse buy them. And so the way that they get stuff is to bug their parents or to. Or to bug some authority. And if they're not getting stuff, they've learned that maybe they haven't bugged the right person. I mean, like, there's. There's no lesson there about work or production or saving or. Or really anything. You know, it's true. So I think it's much better to put them in a situation where they manage the resources over time, and you can help them make that choice. And it leads to conversations.
- [54:05]
Ginny Urch
Yeah, you have specifically in here that you could have it so that your play money would equate to real money. Like so maybe two day bucks is a dollar or something like that. So you go through the logistics in this book too. So it's a lot of the overarching why and all the principles. It includes all the questions for the parents and for the kids and lessons for the kids. Those are at the end of each chapter. There's printables in here and actually people can go to your website stephenday.com and there's some free Mini Society downloads there as well. And you also have a sub stack called Paper Robots Helping Families Talk About Money and Work. So people can check that out as well. Put all the links in the show notes, a couple just last practicalities. People can pick up the books like but book like you said at the very beginning, it's like if you want to start this today, you know, here's the couple steps and then you can read more as you're going. But one of the things that's probably pretty fun. It's all pretty fun designing them. I remember calling our money G Bucks. I remember designing it. I mean I'm, I remember in third grade, you know, like that was such a highlight of third grade. I don't remember much else except that I was James in James and the Giant Peach. So that was exciting. We did a little play. I mean we grew mealworms on our desk. They turned into beetles. I. That's probably mostly all I remember. My teacher collected elephants and I remember Mini Society. So you know, those are my main memories from the third grade. So this is really fun. Like it's very easy. Yeah, you do well. So you can join in a couple last like little logistics. You can have other families join in to make it a little bigger. And also you just talk about the store itself. Like, you know, make the store fun. Rotate things in and out. That's one of the things that can be a sticking point is if the store doesn't actually have things that the kids are interested in and, and the adults.
- [55:55]
Stephen Day
Yeah, about. Well, you're. You jog my memory about third grade. In about two months, the Virginia Council on Economic Education we're putting on a market day for, for classroom Mini economy.
- [56:08]
Ginny Urch
Oh, that's what you were talking about.
- [56:09]
Stephen Day
Okay, so we, so we're going to have. There will be several hundred kids there selling stuff in their classroom businesses where in Henrico county partnering with the Richmond area schools. And so we've, we've had this before the pandemic as big as 1400 kids selling stuff from their classroom businesses. So we have classroom mini economies as well. If you like you mentioned, if you go to my website, drstephenday.com there's the downloads for the savings template which I think any parent should use anytime for any reason. Like you don't need to be doing a mini economy for that. You just help your kids visualize their savings savings. And there's some other helpful templates and downloads there. And yeah, I do. I blog about these things every two weeks to give extra guidance for people if they want more than than what's in the book. You asked about the household store and about the, the money. So because you can trade our household currency for US Dollars, that's how it transitions up as kids get older. As kids get older, they want want the US dollars more and there's never. But we want them to still be part of the mini economy because as my wife pointed out, there's they're part of the family, so they're part of the economy. This is a way that we interact together. But as they get older, they usually don't want the little things in the store as much, the little trinkets or candy or things like that. But they do still like the privilege coupons, but they also just want the real money. So I have a 13 year old now and so she's largely working for the US dollar. So there's, it's, it transitions easily.
- [57:42]
Ginny Urch
Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so one last thing. Talk to us about skateboarding. Oh, who was your skateboard sponsor?
- [57:52]
Stephen Day
I was sponsored for skateboarding by this little Indiana company called Super Villain, Super Villain Skateboards out of Bloomington, Indiana. And I was also sponsored by Amused Clothing, the local skateboard shop. And then True Skateboard. And yeah, so I got free skateboard stuff for just wearing their T shirt and skating for them in competitions and sending in video footage of my skateboarding. So I specialize in going down handrails and stairs and things.
- [58:22]
Ginny Urch
What a cool life. Eclectic life. Yes, I do want to hear it.
- [58:25]
Stephen Day
Here's something pretty neat. There's a conference, an economics teaching conference at Purdue University where I grew up this next summer. And so they're going to be having this conference which I'm attending right where I got in so much trouble skateboarding. When I was a kid, the police chased us all the time. And so I've told the conference attendees that they can get the tour, the super villain tour of Purdue University skateboarding next summer. Who would ever learn the economics from
- [58:55]
Ginny Urch
skateboard in Trans trouble getting in a little bit of trouble. To Dr. Stephen Day, Associate professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business, Director of the VCU center for Economic Education, and chairperson of the Virginia Stump Jumpstart Coalition for Personal Finance Literacy. You've been reviewed everywhere your eyes. Your, your ideas have been featured in Forbes and Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Junior Scholastic, and help teachers, hundreds and hundreds of teachers use these mini economies in their classrooms. And now we're running them in our homes. There's a special little section in the back if you're a homeschool family that's in the book as well. There's an appendix for homeschoolers. The book is called Teach a Kid to Save. It's out now. A fun hands on approach to building smart money habits. Stephen we always end our show with the same question. What's a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside, maybe skateboarding?
- [59:46]
Stephen Day
Well, my, when I was eight years old old, my friend Ben and I would disappear into Happy Hollow park for hours and build forts. And sometimes our parents were pretty alarmed, you know, but we would just put together cheese sandwiches and just disappear into the woods. And it was amazing. When I got a little older, it was out all day, every day skateboarding. And it was, and again, we got in more trouble then, but we really learned how to, how to fend for ourselves, you know, roaming the streets of Lafayette, Indiana.
- [60:21]
Ginny Urch
I love it. Well, huge congrats on this book. It's so helpful. I love that you have continued your dad's legacy and really I brought this home. You know, obviously it's one thing to do it at a school in a school setting, but a very different thing to do within your household because then it facilitates all this conversation that you can have. And I just felt like the questions were very deep and I, I just think there's of lot, a lot of value here and it's something that people are not doing or really talking about. So thank you. Thanks for this resource and thanks for being here today.
- [60:47]
Stephen Day
It's been really fun. Jeannie
- [60:51]
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Stephen Day
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