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Parenting From Beyond The Grave. Teaching Children Finances For When You’re Not Around

November 16th, 2016 Posted in financial education, financial literacy, learning about money, teaching children about money
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Becoming a parent is a huge responsibility. That responsibility doesn’t end, even from beyond the grave. Every parent takes steps to ensure their children would be okay should anything happen. Discussing when you won’t be around anymore isn’t nice, but it’s necessary. It can be reassuring to have relatives who could take care of things. Even so, it’s important to talk things through with your children so they know what would happen. Don’t hide this from your kids, especially as they get older. How can they learn if you don’t teach them? Here are some things you should take time to explain.

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YOUR WILL

If you don’t have a will, you should write one. If you do have a will, it’s important to discuss the document with your children. Setting up a will is the best way to help them figure things out after you’ve gone. Bear in mind that it won’t be any good to them if they don’t understand it, or don’t know it exists. Talk them through the contents of your will and make sure they know where it’s kept. Keeping them in the loop will give them much greater understanding of things. Ensure they’re prepared for the worst. Thorough explanation helps avoid confusion or arguments when the time comes. It’s also worth discussing who will be taking care of them should anything happen. No one wants to have such a sombre conversation, but it’s necessary. It will put all your minds at ease.

LIFE INSURANCE

Explaining the value of insurance to your children will help them understand the need for insurance when they get older. It’s essential that they know how important these added policies are. While you’re explaining insurance to them, it may be worth mentioning life insurance. It’s crucial that your children are aware of any life insurance policies you have. That way, they’ll know what they’re owed when it comes time. This will also help them set up their own life insurance policy later in life. Our reference to our life insurance policies can make a real difference later down the line. Learn what your children will receive from your policy after your death so that you can explain it to them. Make sure they know what you pay in and why you do it. Show them phone numbers and who to contact should they need it in the future.

EXPLAIN TO THEM ABOUT ANY TAXES

There are often fees involved in death. Maybe you’ve got savings, or it’s just taxes on your estate that would need paying. It’s important to discuss this with your children too. Make sure they know what they would have to pay, and how to pay it. This knowledge is crucial. Make sure to explain it in terms your children would understand. This conversation may be best left until your kids are a little older and have some understanding of the tax world. Be realistic in how much your kids are going to understand at any given age.

 

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I Bet You Didn’t Know How Easy It Is To Add $10,000 To The Value Of Your Home

November 16th, 2016 Posted in financial education
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There are all sorts of things that can decrease the value of your home. Just having an overflowing bin outside can drop its value by more than 10 percent. Litter in the street outside your home can cause its value to fall more than 12 percent.

Making your neighborhood clean is certainly one way to increase the value of your home. But is there anything else you can do. Here we’re going to look at all the ways you can boost the value of your home by $10,000. Let’s take a look.

Flooring

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Ugly lino and badly fitted laminate are a big turn off fo buyers. It’s yet another job that they’ll have to do once they move in. And it can cause the value of your home to plummet considerably. An HSBC study found that the price of a house can increase dramatically once new carpets are installed. According to their data, house prices rise by an average of $2,500 if carpets are new. To save money on a new installation, homeowners might want to install them themselves. You may also be able to achieve the same effect by getting your carpets deep cleaned. Having a carpet in a fit state is an excellent way to woo buyers and get them interested in your property.

Turn Your Home Into A Showroom

According to Homesmart Real Estate, it’s important to market your home effectively. One of the ways that you can do this is to transform it into a showroom. Creating a showroom is actually relatively easy. All you have to do is to fill a room with as few objects as possible and put neutral colors on the wall. A picture here, a sofa there – it all adds up to make the house look a lot more presentable.

The idea isn’t to put your own personality on the property, but to give buyers key pointers that suggest a direction in which they could take the room. A few candles in the bathroom or a fruit bowl in the kitchen helps to make the home more tabula rasa. Just decluttering and using a few well-placed objects can dramatically increase the value of your home. It also helps reduce the amount by which buyers attempt to undercut your offer.

Pull Out Your Dirty Toilet

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Besides the kitchen, buyers consider the bathroom to be the most important room in the house. A recent survey by a letting agency found that a dirty bathroom was the biggest issue for new buyers. So what can sellers do?

The first thing to do is grab your bleach and rubber gloves and get scrubbing. Cleaning up the bathroom is essential if you want to impress the people who come to look around your house. Don’t just focus on the toilet and the sink. Make sure you scrub the grouting around your shower and bath tub too. Black, moldy grouting is a big no-no.

You may also want to update out-of-date features like soap holders, faucets, and towel rails.

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It’s more about freedom than it is money

April 15th, 2014 Posted in financial education
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http://thefinancialfairytales.com Financial Freedom imageTrying to teach children and young people about financial matters can be tough. Everything seems such a long time in the future when you’re very young and, in many cases, the natural tendency in life is to desire material objects as status symbols – most notably when we’re young and impressionable.

There are many resources available to try and make financial matters more fun and interesting for children and young people – but most of these do tend to concentrate on the numbers, albeit often in very creative ways.

But one thing all young people very much can relate to is freedom. And real financial advice and sound management of one’s finances is really far more about freedom than it is about money itself.

Encouraging children from an early age to concentrate on life’s essentials and to eschew status symbols for their own sake can help give young people a solid grounding for their lives ahead. In other words; finances can be boring, but the freedom to be able to do almost as one pleases certainly isn’t – and this is something children and young people can very much relate to.

So if, for example, they think about life’s essentials (and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is an excellent teaching tool in this regard) of home and income for the things in life we need rather than simply want – it’s a good starting point.

An excellent source of information on the wisdom of buying one’s home is available from HSBC. The study also shows just how disadvantaged those starting late in sorting out their finances will be in the future.

It was said 2000 years ago by the Roman philosopher Seneca that wealth is the slave of a wise man and the master of a fool. The quicker a young person can come to understand the true meaning of this philosophy – the happier they will tend to be in life. This is not about the pursuit of money, but the pursuit of freedom and the time we all need to really be who we are.

Encouraging children to seek out their true vocation in life, one which also provides a good or reasonable living, is one of the most important lessons we can teach our children. Then managing the income that living provides and living well with one’s means as we steadily build the requisite capital to give us choices in life is also vital.

A lot of what modern society throws at young people, though, is not like this at all. The power of the commercial world in convincing young people that they “should” have a great car, the latest scents, a certain lifestyle, the latest mobile devices and so on – is immense. And much of the advertising is aimed specifically at the innate weaknesses most young people have as they try to establish themselves in society with their peers. It goes right to the heart of human nature and is a malign influence.

It’s our job as parents is to fight back and demonstrate to our children that rejection of short-term materialism and the things beyond our financial reach is a great way to achieve the freedom to do the things we truly want to do in life.

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History of The British Pound

November 29th, 2013 Posted in financial education, learning about money
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Here is an interesting infographic which charts the history of the British Pound

History of the pound infographic from Sainsbury’s Bank

 

 

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Make £5 Grow- Enterprise Education in Schools

October 4th, 2013 Posted in financial education
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 Virgin Money’s ‘Make £5 Grow’ scheme is now reaching schools across the country

  Participating schools have made a combined £10K in profit since scheme launch

 Almost 3,000 children have been involved so far

 

Virgin Money is reaching out to primary schools across the UK with the national roll-out of its successful Make £5 Grow scheme.

 

What is Make £5 Grow?

Make £5 Grow is a fun and engaging enterprise education initiative designed to help draw out those important entrepreneurial skills in primary school pupils, combined with some basics of financial education.

The Make £5 Grow scheme is very simple. For those schools wishing to take part, Virgin Money will help make this possible by providing an interest-free loan of £5 for every participating pupil, up to a maximum of £250 per school, for 50 pupils. Pupils are then encouraged to form small teams and pool their money to create a small business and develop products or services they can sell.

They are encouraged to think carefully about their target audience, product costing, pricing and marketing. In the process, they develop their business skills and financial understanding. In addition, schools keep any profit made after the original loan has been paid back – a reward for pupils’ enterprise and hard work.

Already a success in the North East and North   West regions, Make £5 Grow is now expanding across the country through Virgin Money’s network of 75 Stores. Staff volunteers build relationships with schools in their local area and introduce the scheme, helping pupils set up mini-businesses to try to make a profit.

Teachers have found the programme to be flexible, having used it alongside the National Curriculum in core subjects including English and maths, Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE), citizenship, design technology and art and design.

Case study

Year 5 and 6 pupils at Clent Parochial Primary School in Worcestershire made £386 in profit recently by taking part in the scheme.

Headteacher Christian Hamilton explained: “It was fantastic. One of our teachers heard about the scheme from another school that had already done it. We were looking at refreshing our curriculum to make it more relevant and provide more practical life skills, so this was the perfect programme to fit with that ambition.”

Mr Hamilton, who has been head at the 110-pupil rural school in North Worcestershire for two years, introduced Make £5 Grow to 31 pupils earlier this year – a mixed class made up of Years 5 and 6. It was so successful that he now plans on expanding the number of pupils taking part.

He added: “Being able to use and apply skills that are taught in class to real-life situations has helped the children develop in confidence and teamwork, demonstrate leadership skills and have fun.

“Parents loved it too. We’ve had some great comments.”

The profits have been invested in a class trip to WestMidlandSafari Park in Kidderminster, as well as the purchase and care of a new school guinea pig, and there are still some funds left over to invest in the expansion of the scheme.

Mr Hamilton said: “The focus on numeracy is particularly useful.”

What other schools have said about the Enterprise Education scheme

Previous programme participants have set up thriving companies selling calendars, bags and cupcakes to name a few. Some of these businesses are still running and continue to make a profit for their school.

Ron Naylor, Headteacher at ForefieldJuniorSchool in Merseyside said: “Our pupils deserve to be prepared with the knowledge and skills to thrive and succeed in an ever more challenging world.

“The Make £5 Grow initiative inspires and engages our children in meaningful inventiveness, creativity and enterprise. It will not only enthuse our children but also provides stimulating learning in truly relevant contexts.”

India Parkinson, a pupil at Sacred Heart RC Primary School in Bolton added: “I felt it was not just a fun and exciting project but I felt it gave me a lot of confidence and was a great experience for my team.”

Ciaran Clare, also from Sacred Heart RC Primary School said: “I used planning and creative skills by debating what idea we should have and what we should create with our budget. Also we used real life situations by using the same skills we would use in a job or business.

“As well as planning we used lots of maths by working out what it would cost and what the profit could be. We made a lot of money for our school too.”

 

How to find out more

If you would like to know more about how to get involved in Make £5 Grow, please contact us on 0191 279 4676 or email press.office@virginmoney.com. And to see the project come to life, why not take a look at our award-winning video about the scheme at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az-7p2AgVr4.

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