MSI Press Blog

  / Excerpt from  Clean Your Plate!  (Bayardelle)  -   Chapter 1 Do You Need Any Money?  (continued from November 22, 2024) The Need for Need  We’ve discussed the “supply” end of your kid’s finances, but the “demand” side should also get a little bit of attention. The point of having a financial system is to teach your kids how to manage their money as an adult, but they don’t have those pesky expenses we have as adults. We grown-up folk go to work every day because without our salary we can’t afford things like food or rent. This is a pretty significant motivator. Unfortunately, there’s no driving force quite so urgent in your child’s financial ecosystem. No matter what chores they do (or don’t do), you’re going to pay for their food, housing, school, and other necessary expenses, so why bother taking the garbage out?  This is when the art of creating valid needs comes in. You never want to deprive your child of the necessities, b...

  / Excerpt from  Clean Your Plate!  (Bayardelle)  -   Chapter 1 Do You Need Any Money?  (continued from May 22, 2024) So, How Do Kids Get Money?  So, now that we can all agree kids need some kind of financial experience, the questions become how do we give them money, how much should they get, and what (if any) rules should be attached to the way they spend it? We’ll go over each of these questions in the upcoming sections, but before we go any further, I want to make one thing very clear: not all household chores should be paid.  The Case for Unpaid Chores   There is a wealth of psychological research that demonstrates the long-term benefits of having kids do chores. Kids who were given chores at home have been shown to have better social relationships and higher grades, get better early-career jobs, and manifest a higher degree of self-sufficiency (M. Rossman, 2002, cited in Wallace, 2015).  These findings were strongest ...

  Excerpt from Clean Your Plate!  Be Nice to Your Friends [ILLUSTRATION 6, CHAPTER 6 WARNING GOES HERE] As anyone who has ever talked to a toddler can tell you, toddlers can be brutal. Like, soul-crushingly, life-ruiningly frank. There’s a lot of truth to the Internet meme that says “if a woman calls you ugly, she’s jealous; if a man calls you ugly, she’s flirting, but if a kid calls you ugly...you’re ugly.” Kids have absolutely no sense of social niceties. They also occasionally spaz out with small bursts of poorly-controlled demonic meanness of unknown origin. (No, it’s not just your kids. It’s all of them.) Why We Say It The fact that parents across the globe tell their kids to be nice to their friends is entirely unsurprising. We’re terrified our little monsters will alienate their peers and doom themselves to a life of social isolation and misery (sticking us with the therapy bills). However well-meaning this parental plea for our kids to exercise their still-...