Kids Archives - Page 2 of 4

Um, I Was Told to Stop Talking to My Kid About Money…

Everyone has opinions on how kids should be raised. And there really are no perfect answers. However, I never thought there’d be a day when my own parents would tell me to stop talking to my kid about money. But that’s exactly what happened. If you’re not familiar with my daughter, she’s a stellar writer on the Route to Retire blog. Her post Like Father, Like Daughter… got some pretty good attention – including making it onto Rockstar Finance. She’s seven and an extremely bright kid (I think most parents say that about their kids). She’s kind to everyone and has a great sense of humor. She’s artistic and loves gymnastics. But one thing that makes her a little unique is she’s

I’m Struggling Right Now

I’m struggling. I’ve been very careful to keep politics and other sensitive issues out of my blog. We all have our opinions, of course, but I just don’t think this particular blog is the right place for that kind of discussion. So I’m going to try to keep this high-level on that front, but there’s something that’s affecting me deeply right now. Unless you’re living under a rock, you know about the shootings that have been happening in our school systems. And like most of us, I’m utterly filled with disbelief when these things happen. The recent shootings at the high school in Parkland, Florida on 2/14/17 are no exception. I was just in awe and felt tremendous grief for

Like Father, Like Daughter…

Like father, like daughter… Recently, my 7-year-old daughter started asking me some questions about my blog. She wanted to know what I write about and why I do it. I’m very deliberate in making sure that I don’t treat her like a kid when she’s interested in answers to something. I have a couple reasons for this: 1) I want to ensure she’s never afraid to ask questions. And so far, that’s always been effective. She never feels like she can’t check with us on something she’s unsure of. She asks a lot of questions… the right questions. I like that a lot. If you think you know everything, you won’t learn. If you’re not afraid to ask questions, though,

The 10 Commandments for Kids and Money

When it comes to kids and money, we all want to ensure that they’ve got the greatest chance to succeed in life. We can push our kids to be smart and learn in school. We can teach them to be good to other kids and to share. We can help them to understand that they should respect others. We can show them good manners and how to be polite. But what about the money side of the formula? Isn’t that important? I spend a lot of my time staring at Quicken and Personal Capital trying to plan for financial independence and early retirement. I feel very blessed that we’re in a solid position to make this happen. However, another part

Another Reason Why Working for Yourself is a Smart Idea…

We all know that working for yourself has a lot of benefits that you can’t get from working for someone else. The ability to better control your company’s destiny, the independence and freedom you can gain, and the flexibility in hours are just a few of the possibilities that might be gained. However, I was thinking recently about another major benefit that working for yourself can provide. But what fun would that be to just share it outright with you? A personal anecdote would make it all the more dramatic and amusing and make it feel like you’ve learned some kind of valuable lesson in the process… The garage sale Every year, our development has a monster garage sale. I say monster because we have

An Open Letter to My Daughter

An Open Letter to My Daughter My father passed away when I was around the age my daughter is now. That’s made me think over the years that, should something ever happen to me, I’d like to know that I was able to pass on some of what I’ve learned. With that, I decided to write a letter to my daughter with some of my thoughts. I consider this a work in progress. There’s ultimately too much information to share at one time, so I’ll probably update this post or add an additional letter at a later time. I’ve made the decision to share the letter to my daughter because I’m hoping that, as she gets older, she might appreciate this site as a document of