Wealth of Advice

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By Francisco J. Colayco

I received an email some time back from the owner of a school offering Pre-ELem-H.S. He said that many parents can’t pay regularly their monthly tuition fees. They run short of funds for payroll. He called for the parents with big back accounts but all can’t make both ends meet. He said” Do you have any solution regarding this matter? How can we instill SAVINGS in the students? Do you have any book to be used by them?”

My reply:

You have to decide if you are running your school as a business or as a charity. As a business, you might want to establish your financial projections and how much you can really afford to be lenient to your students. Then, you can set up rules on what to do when the parents cannot pay. Otherwise, your business may not survive.

We have “Money for Kids” available in our website and leading bookstores. However, I am a proud grandfather and I receive articles related to raising kids such as one by Evonne Lack called “Top 7 ways to raise a money-smart kid.” Evonne supports the same basic ideas and principles I discussed in my book through her stories and quotes.

There are so many things we want to teach our child first like reading, writing, counting, sports etc. but Evonne shares :”Kids are constantly being bombarded with messages to spend money, and we need to counteract that,” says Sam Renick, financial consultant and children’s author. “The earlier kids start developing good money habits, the better.”

She provides us “seven tricks to turn money lessons from a fight into a delight.” Her tricks are really for the American environment but I’d like to translate them to the local Filipino environment.

“1. Hand your preschooler a buck.”

In Peso terms, a buck is about P45. For our Filipino preschool kid 3-4year old, I would start with a P20 bill and P10, P5, P1 and 25-centavo coins. Even if your child cannot yet understand the value of each bill or coin, it is making him familiar in the same way that you show letters or numbers to him even if he doesn’t understand it as a start to learning how to read.

For parents who use credit cards, it would be a good idea to use cash sometimes to buy things when you have your child with you. Let your kid give the P20 bill or some coins to pay for a purchase or drop some coins into the piggy bank or a charity box. You can also play “pretend store” or “pretend bank.” Be patient and don’t be upset if he does not use the “cash” as you want him to. Remember that it starts that way too when you are teaching the alphabet.

More next week.