Sunny Gault 0:00
Your kid seems interested in money, probably because he or she is always asking you for more of it. But how do we as parents help our children better understand, and also appreciate how money works? I'm Sunny with New Mommy Media, and I'm here with Ty Allan Jackson. He is a children's book author and motivational speaker. Ty, thank you so much for being with us today.
Ty Allan Jackson 0:22
Hey, Sunny, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Sunny Gault 0:25
Ty, I know you believe encouraging kids to become young entrepreneurs that can really help teach them more about money. So let's talk a little bit about that. how can entrepreneurship teach our kids more about money?
Ty Allan Jackson 0:37
Wow, you know, I think what entrepreneurship, I want to broaden it out to know so much more about money, I think entrepreneurship can teach them more about life, I think what, in what directly I would love for aquifer kids to focus on when they think of becoming entrepreneurs, is possibility, it's for the possibility for them to see using their own creativity, or maybe an opportunity to be able to use that as a catalyst for creating a business. I mean, every kid is seeing, you know, I want to be a train conductor, or I want to be a racecar driver. But maybe in their heart, they're supposed to be a typography. Maybe in their soul. They're supposed to be an engineer, maybe in their heart, they're supposed to be an architect. And so they may not, you know, see those things regularly. But if they know how to tinker or know how to build or create, if that's in their heart, and soul and spirit, I want entrepreneurship to kind of be a vessel for opportunity. And of course, within that opportunity, you'd love to make some money, you know, so, so kind of in the macro, I wanted to be opportunity in the micro, we could focus on the money and why the money matters.
Sunny Gault 1:43
Yeah. And then as money starts to come in, obviously, you can teach them a lot of things. You know, my kids really vary in a in age, you know, some of them are learning to count money and do that kind of stuff. And then some of them are really thinking about this kind of stuff, as far as how do we make money. But there's I'm finding that there's a lot of valuable lessons, even if it's just counting money out, this literally happened to us yesterday, is there was some money on the table. And I said, Okay, you know, we need to distribute this money evenly between four people. How do we do that? I mean, so there's like a lot of lessons you can teach kids in the process.
Ty Allan Jackson 2:17
You know, I love that really simple exercise, because I think kids have this really weird misconception about money, because they associated with being a parent and having a job and coming out of an ATM machine, maybe not necessarily something that they earn, or have to decipher, where does it go? And how does it go and why it's going anywhere in the first place. So I think that really simple exercise of kind of divvying it up, and then having responsibility for what this money supposed to do. I'm stealing that money from you figure out a way to implement that dividing up the money and kind of figuring out what it's supposed to do. Yeah, totally like that idea. So yeah. Nice job on you.
Sunny Gault 2:58
Oh, thank you. Well, you mentioned ATM. And that came up in the conversation yesterday to my my daughter was asking about ATMs and how they work. And my other my other kid was like, Well, you just go in and you enter some buttons and money comes out. And I'm like, Oh, if it were only that simple, that would be amazing. So yeah, so we as parents, we're always trying to teach our kids about money. And my concern as a parent is I want them to be informed about money. But at the same time, I don't want them to be obsessed with money, like we were talking about earlier, there's so many good things that can come from teaching them how to become an entrepreneur and kind of think outside of that proverbial box. But what are some of the recommendations that you might have for parents that are kind of like me, that might be a little concerned that, oh, if we start talking about money now, then they're just going to become obsessed with it.
Ty Allan Jackson 3:47
You know, the old adage is that money doesn't change people, it only enhances what they are. And I believe that wholeheartedly. Money is a tool. If I had a hammer in my hand, I could build something awesome. Or I could break something. It's all dependent upon me, the money is just a tool. Social media is no different people demonize social media, social media is just a reflection of who we are, you know, I can utilize social media for the most, you know, angelic of ways, or I can use it to demonize certain things. It's all dependent upon me. So the biggest thing that we can do when we're talking to kids about money, is actually make sure that we're building smart forward thinking, empathetic, compassionate kids, because they're going to then take that money and do smart, empathetic, compassionate things. And that's really the bigger picture when it comes to how do we talk to our kids about money? The actual answer is you actually just talk to your kids, and you actually just build really beautiful children. And those beautiful children in turn will do really beautiful positive things with money. And so it's, it's it's a lot broader than just, you know, like, we don't want money to turn our kids bad. Well, no, that's kind of not exactly how it works. You know, it's really a pendant. It's a tool that's dependent upon the user.
Sunny Gault 5:01
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. You know, a lot of parents kind of go back and forth with this idea of an allowance. So I wanted to get your take on that. Obviously, we've got the entrepreneurs, you know, side of things and creating some sort of business to make money. And I love that concept. What are your thoughts on allowances and how to make that work, if possible?
Ty Allan Jackson 5:23
I love the concept of allowance, I'm not so keen on the concept of allowance just to give kids money, because it's not a true microcosm of how life works. Because you know, that that type of mindset won't allow kids to go out into the world and think, you know, I'm entitled to be able to receive money, because all my life, I've received money, because I exist, you know, um, anything worth having is earned. And so having your kids take half have tasks for the betterment of the family unit, whether it's doing the dishes, or setting the table, I think is really a powerful tool that also becomes a microcosm of what you can expect when you get out to the world, the effort that you put forth in your allowance in your homework or home work, well, justifying allowance, the effort that you put forth, out into the world will justify your salary. So I definitely I'm a big fan of allowances. I'm just a bigger proponent of making sure that kids are working for their allowance, instead of just receiving an allowance.
Sunny Gault 6:23
Yeah, yeah, me too. You can't see it right now time, but directly to the side of me is literally a huge right board. And on it, I have exactly what you said. So I'm so glad you said that. I'm like, Okay, if you make your bed if you do this, you know, if you come in when I say you come in, if you do your chores for the day, you get a checkmark, right. And then at the end of the week, that can add up to an allowance. But if you didn't do what you were supposed to do, you know, instead of getting five bucks or whatever for the week, you're only gonna get one because you know, if you did that on a job, well, quite frankly, you may not even have a job, by the way, if you try, you know, I'm trying to teach them listen, the more you do, and the more committed you are to something, the more you're going to benefit from it. So I'm so glad you said that, I guess, you know, patting myself on the back.
Ty Allan Jackson 7:09
Well done, mom.
Sunny Gault 7:10
Awesome. All right. Well, Ty, thank you so much for the great information. You guys need to check out Ty's book. Here it is. It's called "Make Your Own Money". You can check it out on his website, which is http://tyallanjackson.com. And while you're there, head on over to our website, https://newmommymedia.com. It's where real moms talk about real life.
