The Art of Allowance Podcast | Parenting | Families | Money Smarts | Financial Literacy

Are you wondering how best to talk to your kids during a crisis?    With coronavirus and COVID-19 dominating our lives, I thought it would be helpful to take a slight detour with this episode and talk to an expert about how we can have better conversations with our kids in the midst of a crisis. My guest on this special episode of the podcast is Lucy Rimalower.    Lucy is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist practicing in Los Angeles. She works with individuals and families addressing anxiety, parent-child communication and women’s issues. She also provides crisis response consultation. She's an ideal guest to help us improve the quality of conversations we're having with our kids as we navigate this pandemic.

Are you looking for ideas to incorporate into your allowance program? Then you’ll enjoy my conversation with Mark and Kimberlee Barnes, the “Not So Perfect Parents.” Mark and Kimberlee are both educators — Mark is a school administrator and Kimberlee is an elementary technology specialist. In this episode, they discuss their implementation of The Art of Allowance program with their family of four — three boys and one girl. True to the purpose of my book and this podcast, they share their struggles and successes on the road to raising money-smart kids. You’ll see how they’ve made the program their own and I hope you’ll find more than a few takeaways that you can implement in your own allowance program.

Wondering about the effectiveness of personal finance education in the classroom? Did you know that there is good and bad student debt? My recent conversation with Carly Urban is full of informative findings and practical advice. Carly is an Associate Professor of Economics at Montana State University and a Visiting Scholar with The Office of Financial Education at The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. She is also an affiliate of The Center for Financial Security at The University of Wisconsin-Madison. Carly completed her Ph.D. in Economics at UW-Madison, and she holds a B.A. in Economics and International Affairs from The George Washington University. Her work, largely focusing on the causal effects of financial education on behavior, has been published in top economics and inter-disciplinary peer-reviewed journals as well as featured in prominent media outlets, including Bloomberg News, CNN Money, Market Watch, The New York Times and TIME.

Do you fret about giving your kids too much autonomy when it comes to money and allowance? In this episode of The Art of Allowance Podcast, my guest David Owen offers a candid, funny and time-tested glimpse into the family financial system he wrote about in The First National Bank of Dad: The Best Way to Teach Kids About Money. This is a wonderfully written and hilarious book which heavily influenced my most recent work, The Art of Allowance. Using a method he developed to provide maximum age-appropriate control, David was able to raise two money-smart, money-empowered children.   David has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1991, and he is also a contributing editor at both Golf Digest and Popular Mechanics. Named one of The Fifty Funniest American Writers, he is the author of more than a dozen books, including the aforementioned First National Bank of Dad and the recent Volume Control: Hearing in a Deafening World. This episode is chock-full of enlightening information, from simple tactics like David's enhanced interest program to his broader philosophy that autonomy drives learning. I hope you enjoy this discussion as much as I did.

The Holidays are here and we can help you shift the focus from things to experiences with great advice from New Dream. In this episode, I talk to Guinevere Higgins and Kelley Dennings of New Dream. New Dream is a non-profit whose mission is to empower individuals, communities and organizations to transform the ways they consume to improve well-being for people and the planet.   Guinevere is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at New Dream. She is an ardent believer in the ability of individuals and communities to take action and ownership to make positive change. She finds the strategic partnerships necessary to support transformational activities on the community level.   Kelley Dennings spent 15 years in the recycling industry and now works with the Center for Biological Diversity, focusing on consumption's effects on wildlife and habitat. She works at the intersection of health, environment and social change, and serves on New Dream's Advisory Council.   We are releasing this episode during the Holidays because the focus of much of our discussion is about how to enjoy a season with more fun and less stuff. Also, a quick note. I should have had Guinevere step away from the mike a bit as her voice distorts from time to time. Entirely my bad, but this episode has so much good stuff that I hope you can ignore this production issue and enjoy the content.

Do you ever wonder where the real heroes are? Look no further than Council Bluffs, Iowa. In this episode, I talk with Kyle Osborne, the Director of Financial Literacy at TS Institute in southwest Iowa, about helping families become money smart. Kyle is a financial literacy education expert and works closely with teachers and administrators to provide free, effective financial literacy resources for grades K-12. In addition to working with schools, Kyle also works with area Non-Profit organizations to deliver financial literacy courses.

In this second installment of our shorter format episodes — which we call Small Change — I explore the term “money-empowered.” This is a stated goal of The Art of Allowance (heck, it’s part of the subtitle) and it’s a question I ask almost all my guests. In this episode, I present you with four interesting responses and why I think each one of them is meaningful. Listen to what these guests had to say and think about what it is that the term money-empowered means to you.

Unsure of how to initiate and keep up the money conversation with your kids? My recent discussion with Ruth Soukup can shed some light on this crucial step in the financial literacy journey. A mother of two girls, Ruth runs an eponymous online media company with business, lifestyle, motivation and productivity divisions. As if that isn't enough of a full plate, she is also a New York Times bestselling author, host of the Do It Scared podcast as well as founder of the Elite Blog Academy course for online business owners and the Living Well Spending Less blog. In this episode, we address several of the fear archetypes from her most recent book, Do It Scared, and how they relate to allowance, the money conversation and its impact as well as how to establish and adjust money guidelines.

Looking for ways to help your children combat the pervasive notion of materialism? In this episode of The Art of Allowance Podcast, I have a discussion with Tim Kasser. Tim is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Knox College in Illinois. He has published over 125 scientific articles and chapters on materialism, values/goals, motivation, ecological sustainability and quality of life, among other topics. He has also authored five books that have been translated into a half-dozen languages. In short, you can learn a ton from Tim. I know I did, and I know you will by giving our conversation a listen. 

Feeling perplexed by all the higher education financing options available to both you and your child? My recent Art of Allowance Podcast guest, David Flores Wilson, can walk you through all the particulars. David helps Gen X and Gen Y professionals as well as business owners in New York City achieve financial freedom. Named one of Investopedia’s 100 Top Financial Advisors of 2019, he is a Senior Wealth Manager for Watts Capital and Writer/Editor for Planning to Wealth. David holds the Certified College Financial Consultant (CCFC), Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) designations. His financial guidance has appeared on Yahoo!Finance, MSN News, CNBC and InvestmentNews. And if these accolades weren’t enough, David had the privilege of representing Guam in the 1996 Atlanta Games. (Pretty neat, huh? I can now check Olympian off my podcast guest list!) Our conversation covers many college search hot topics, including researching schools, identifying types of aid and deciphering those pesky acronyms (such as CSS, EFC, and FAFSA).