#50 – Money Smart Kids ** November 12, 2014
Guest // Rachel Ramsey Cruze ** Host // Louise Kuo Habakus

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There’s a new narrative about entitled and unmotivated children that has taken hold and it’s dangerously incomplete. It goes something like this:

Children today think that money grows on trees!

Kids demand the latest of everything! They don’t know how good they have it.

I thought my daughter was launched but she boomeranged back home!

The New York Times recently reported that 60% of people in their 20s and early 30s receive financial support from their parents and another 20% live at home. Money magazine’s latest article, Paying For Your Kids… Forever? features loving parents postponing retirement to cover their children’s groceries, cell phone bills, and rent payments. “Emerging adulthood” is now viewed as a new and permanent life stage. Pretty sobering stuff.

But there’s something else going on that isn’t covered in these headlines. Kids have front row seats to their parents’ financial dramas. American adults are woefully ill-informed about money:

• 25% of Americans have no emergency savings
• About half do not pay their credit card balances in full
• Consumers are taking out larger auto loans
• The typical bankruptcy filer is older and married
• The average student loan debt is $32,656
• 1.5 million Americans aged 50+ lost their homes since 2007

This isn’t just a “kid” problem, it’s not about being spoiled and lazy, and it’s not about bad luck that happens to us. Children who don’t understand money grow up to be adults who don’t understand money. Fortunately, there’s something that can be done.

This is where financial expert Dave Ramsey and his daughter Rachel Cruze come in. They wrote Smart Money Smart Kids to help parents raise the next generation to win with money. I gobbled this book up in one sitting and then handed it to my 13 year-old. It’s remarkably simple and simply brilliant. Kids want to learn. We have to teach them. Dave and Rachel talk about work, spending, saving, and giving. They challenge our baked-in attitudes about allowances, debt, college, and more. My son can’t put the book down. I’m betting this show will convince you that, no matter how old your child is, it’s time to start setting expectations, laying ground rules, and building a common sense foundation that may end up being one of your most important legacies.

Note: Valeri Sewald helped co-produce this radio program.

.Rachel Cruze is the co-author of Smart Money Smart Kids. She appears regularly in national and local media. Rachel uses the knowledge and experiences from growing up in the Ramsey household to educate students and young adults on the proper ways to handle money and stay out of debt. Her father, Dave Ramsey, has written four New York Times best-selling books and his radio show is heard by over 6 million listeners on more than 500 radio stations.

Louise Kuo Habakus is Executive Director of Fearless Parent, lead host and producer of Fearless Parent Radio, and mom of two. She is a published author, runs the non-profit Center for Personal Rights, lectures widely, and has appeared in numerous media outlets, including ABC World News Tonight, Fox & Friends, and The New York Times. Louise was a Bain consultant and a C-level executive in the financial services industry. She holds two degrees from Stanford University. She is an advisory board member of GreenMedInfo and the Canary Kids Movie project.