What do you wish for your child?  To grow up healthy, certainly.  Smart, hopefully.  Funny, kind, thoughtful, strong, brave, clean, and reverant — fantastic.  But we also want our children to be smart with their money.  To not be the next victim of a Madoff.  Or a mortgage scam.  Or a get-rich-quick scheme from a Nigerian email.

We want them to be independent and strong.  Professionally.  Emotionally.  Financially.

Where do they learn how to handle money?  Schools teach arithmetic.  Some teach accounting.  But where do you learn the importance of delayed gratification?  The value of saving today so that you have some tomorrow?  That money is a means but not an end?

In his latest book, Piggybanking — Preparing Your Financial Life for Kids and Your Kids for a Financial Life, Jeff Opdyke guides parents — and prospective parents — through the financial decisions you’ll make at each stage of raising children.

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Tags: financial literacy, Piggybanking, teaching children charity, teaching children financial responsibility

While preparing to review “Saving Money,” a children’s primer, I noticed that the book’s frontispiece indicated it was purchased by the Donald E. Garrant Foundation.  Curious, I Googled the name to find that it is a corporate philanthropy dedicated to financial literacy.  They don’t have a website, but the tax returns of 501(c)(3) organizations are public, and it was easy to find it through the National Center for Charitable Statistics.

The Donald E. Garrant Foundation of Wakefield, MA

In 2007, the Donald E. Garrant Foundation funded:

• $3,608 to the Galvin Middle School for a school program on financial literacy
• $1,000 to the Foundation for the Advancement of Malden Education to purchase supplies
• $622 to the Wakefield High School to purchase Intuit software
• $766 to the Action for Boston Community Development to purchase financial literacy materials
• $5,860 to the Wilmington High School to purchase supplies for library books

None of the six officers of corporation received any compensation for their work.  The foundation’s only other expense was $1,250 in accounting fees.  Their total disbursements were $13,141 which is 6% of the funds’ total assets of $218,065.

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Tags: financial literacy, private foundations, teaching kids about money, The Donald E. Garrant Foundation

Recently I was at our town library with my six-year old son. I saw a copy of “Saving Money,” a slim easy-to-read book that I thought might make for an interesting review on the blog. Assuring my son that it wouldn’t count against his book limit of five, we checked it out and brought it home.

It’s never too early to teach the principles of financial literacy to children.  However, this book doesn’t cut it, and here are four reasons why:

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Tags: book review, financial literacy, Mary Firestone, saving money, teaching children financial responsibility