Be Money Smart In Tough Times - Neale S. Godfrey

Be Money Smart In Tough Times (eBook)

For Parents and Grandparents

Neale S. Godfrey (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
186 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-7512-6 (ISBN)

Parents and grandparents, don't you want to raise money-savvy kids? Who can you turn to during these uncertain and tough financial times? NealeGodfrey, the creator of the 'kids and money' topic, is your trusted source for financial literacy. If you are a parent or grandparent and worried that you might be raising a spoiled or entitled child... this book is for you. We all want our kids to grow up with a healthy attitude toward money, and someday leave the nest to make it on their own. Well, lots of us have blown it! Our little ones whine for what they want, while our teen says, 'I'll be crushed if I don't get the designer jeans my friends have.' And, many adult children come home to live at 'Hotel Mom and Dad (replete with room service and gas in the car). If any of this resonates with you, read this book! NealeGodfreyisthedefinitivevoiceforraisingfinancialyresponsiblechildren. Her latest book will help you and your kids, of any age, grow up to be money smart, and achieve their financial dreams... even in tough times.

These times are unprecedented. You may have become sick; lost loved ones; lost your job; lost your ability to even go out to dinner. Your kids and grandkids are homeschooling and distancing. And, this is a time to either fall apart emotionally and financially or ban together as a family and community. Either way, we must move forward to the "e;new normal."e; We have no idea what that means, but we also know this is going to go on for a while. So, I want to be your mentor through this process and help you and your kids and grandkids to be financially resilient in these tough times. As my business colleague and friend, Mike Hackett, SVP of My Secure Advantage has said, "e;In these times we can either break down or break through. It is our choice."e; This book will help you and your family to "e;break through"e;. We are resilient and adaptive, and we need to muster all of our strength now for ourselves and for the next generation. We not only need to adapt to each other, but we also need to adapt to each other. Together, we can do this. We have seen courage and sadness and hope. Maya Angelou said it best; "e;I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it."e;Before this all happened and if you are a parent or a grandparent you might have worried that you could be raising a spoiled or entitled child. That could still be the case, but it seems like a long time ago that that was a worry. We all want to be good parents. We all want our kids to grow up with a healthy attitude toward money, so that someday they can leave the nest and make it on their own. Well, lots of us have blown it and we hear our little ones whine for what they want; we hear our teens say, "e;I'll be ruined if I don't get what I want;"e; and we see our adult children coming home to live in, "e;Hotel Mom and Dad"e; (replete with room service and gas in the car). These issues will still be part of our consciousness and will be issues that we will face. If any of this resonates with you, help is here. Neale Godfrey, the creator of the topic of "e;Kids and Money"e; in the 1980s when she feared that her children were suffering from the "e;I want, I want syndrome,"e; is here to help you every step-of-the way. You may have read one of Neale's 27 books or have seen her on one of 13 appearances on Oprah or other TV shows, or your kids may have used her financial literacy curricula in school or after school. Neale Godfrey is the definitive voice for teaching financial responsibility, and her expertise will help you and your kids (of any age) grow up to be economically independent and achieve their financial dreams.

Why I Wrote This Book (and others)

I wrote this book because you have asked me to write it. I speak to parents and grandparents all of the time. I give presentations for corporations, public meetings, women’s groups, military personnel (in some cases Wounded Vets), for college groups, financial houses, for school administrators, teachers, and children of all socio-economic levels, for the media on TV, radio, podcasts, webinars, social media... And the issues remain the same. We are all petrified that we are raising financially illiterate kids who will not be able to thrive on their own. We have failed as parents.

You may not have set the best example for your kids, and this may have become very obvious in these trying times. You are not alone. As I said before, many people have to borrow even to cover a $400 emergency. And in the pandemic, many people spent more online than they spent before. We called it Comfort Shopping and excused this behavior as a coping mechanism. Come on! You may not have a job… and your kids see your reaction to that by you shopping? Not only is this bad financial planning, but it also sends the wrong message to your kids. We all hoped that this wouldn’t matter. But today, in our environment, when you may have been furloughed, or worse yet, laid-off, the emergency money is a need… and is really needed.

Even in these tough times, many parents are handing their credit cards to their kids to let them shop online or as they can go back into the malls. When I get in people’s faces and say, “You are allowing your kids to manipulate you?” Rather than the pushback and the self-righteous and defensive response, I thought I’d get; I overwhelmingly hear, “I know, and I need help. Neale, help me.”

I’m here to help; to share some life hacks about money. I am also as passionate about raising financially resilient children and grandchildren as I was when I started this journey in 1985 with my children. So, I wrote this book for all of you parents and grandparents who want to have a road map to raise money-savvy offspring, of any age. With a little coaching, you can press the “Pause Button” and start over from where you went off the rails. It is never too late. More importantly, it is never too early to start these lessons. I liken it to potty training. It’s a life skill your kids will need. It’s easier to start it when they are young. If you wait until your kids are in high school, it’s a bigger and messier job!

I’m the guru in this field of teaching kids about money. I created the topic when my kids shocked me, as little ones, by being financially illiterate. I intervened and wrote the first book to help them and you. Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees: A Parent’s Guide To Raising Financially Responsible Children hit #1 on The New York Times Best Seller’s List. Why? Because you care about raising happy and healthy children, who can build and achieve their financial dreams.

Okay, I got some help from Oprah. As an on-air expert for four and a half years, Oprah believed that this was an essential topic and that all parents had to get involved. She once said on air, “I’d have children just to do Neale’s allowance system.” Her comment validated my work and made me do my “Happy Dance,” as my books flew off the shelves.

The issues today are just as relevant as when Oprah had her network show. There was one that struck me. It was in the “Big Hair” days in 1994, but this scene could play out today.

The first show was in November, and I was on air with two families who were rapidly becoming dysfunctional because of their inability to handle the money part of their life with their kids.

The audience latched on to this.

One couple had spent $2,500 on Christmas for their kids! Their holiday spending spree had put them into the hole for the rest of the year. It took them the full year to pay it back, only to gear up for the next Christmas.

The second couple mortgaged their future to build a new wing on their house as a fantasy play world for their kids, complete with a sound system, TV, computer, and refrigerator. The parents seemed to think it was the way it had to be. “I give them things because they’re things I wish I had when I was a kid,” said the mother of these two boys. “If it makes them happy, it makes me happy.”

But were the kids happy? They seemed pleased, but not satisfied. Would giving them more gifts satisfy them? The other family had six children! And they echoed the same thought: “The kids would be a lot happier if they could have all of the things that their friends do...We’ve gone into debt to meet those needs.”

But did the kids need all that? The parents said Yes…they felt their kids would not be popular without all of this stuff. Oprah’s audience didn’t think so. They were yelling from their seats and were downright hostile to these “spoiled, greedy” kids – and the other kids in the audience were just as hostile as the adults! Oprah asked me if I would work with them—put them on budgets, try to develop healthy spending and saving habits—for the kids and parents. The families agreed to work with me, and I spent four months coaching them via phone.

When I returned with them, on-air, the families and—the eight kids had turned themselves around. If they seemed like selfish, greedy little brats in the first show, now they were lovely! More than that, they felt better about themselves. I put them on my work-for-pay allowance system. If they didn’t earn money for what they wanted, they couldn’t whine for it and get it from their parents. They did stick to their budgets and felt it was a cool challenge to earn money. They offered to pool their resources for Christmas and not to have their parents go into debt. They even pitched in with the household chores and became responsible citizens of a newly accountable family.

The parents began to realize that “stuff” didn’t make up for their childhood of deprivation; that it was never about the stuff. We can’t teach our kids to build a shield of “stuff” to protect them from bullies, no matter how hard we try. Keeping up with the Joneses only means that the bar continually moves upwards because you are always going to meet more entitled Joneses. And it’s not about the Joneses; it’s about you.

I began to realize that, yes, the lessons of budgeting, the teachings of financial responsibility, and the experiences I write and speak about, do apply to life’s other issues. Teaching your children and grandchildren about value was a sound basis for teaching them about the way the world works; and more importantly, your values.

In many ways, this book is an extension of those early days that were represented by my two Oprah families, whom I came to admire for their courage in admitting their problems in front of the 30 million people in Oprah’s audience. Their perseverance in addressing those issues caused the change. I only gave them the tools to help. They did it.

Unfortunately, this story is as relevant today as it was then (and maybe more so) because the peer pressure and access to information are even more significant today. The issues are the same.

My book is for all of you who care about your kids and grandkids as much as I do. We never want them to confuse Net Worth with Self Worth.

Okay, I feel as if a bed of inspirational music should now come up. I’m positive that you are thinking, “Well, sure, Neale has done it with her kids…but she just went through life humming the inspirational music she wants us to listen to and doesn’t know how tough it is for me and my situation.”

It all started when I was the President of The First Women’s Bank, and I was just divorced. (Did I mention that my husband left me in the hospital for another woman 18 hours after our son was born? Did I also mention that I was in active labor for 2.5 months and was held hostage in an Intensive Care Unit in a hospital…and my son was going to be born a mess? I was running the bank from the hospital and got permission for my 3-and-a-half-year-old daughter to visit. She thought it was my office. [Actually, all offices should have intravenous drips!])

Okay, you can see that I have no issues! After I put my Big Girl panties back on and got the divorce, I was back at the bank and watching women struggling to handle their money. They were accomplished in every area of their lives, but felt inadequate about managing their own money. It stemmed from lots of things, one was that in the dark ages, “women were not supposed to be involved with money;” “polite people didn’t talk about money;” and “we were never taught anything about money when we were young.”

Financial illiteracy is not okay, and I wasn’t about to let my kids grow up without understanding basic economics. So, I schlepped my kids around to every bookstore in NYC in 1986, to find books to teach them about money. But the problem was that there were no books to teach kids about money. The topic didn’t have a dedicated book on the shelf. The topic didn’t exist.

Of course, my then three-year-old daughter said, “Rather than keep taking us to bookstores to find a book to teach us about money, Mommy, why don’t you just write the book.” She...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	20.4.2021
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Geld / Bank / Börse
ISBN-10	1-0983-7512-2 / 1098375122
ISBN-13	978-1-0983-7512-6 / 9781098375126

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