Mosaic Reviews #2 : FamilyMint

I was completely excited to see this review item get posted.  It is never too early to start teaching children about money management.  One of the things in our family trees that Michael and I are committed to changing is being good stewards of money.  We are currently trudging through the Dave Ramsey baby steps . Slow and steady wins the race .  I wish I had been taught these things as a child.  My life would be have been so much easier.  Oh well,  all I can do is teach my children better. 

Logan is undergoing Financial Peace University for Teens as his finance course.  We have been having some fantastic discussions.  Madison and JoJo were starting to feel left out.  Then FamilyMint arrived.  Madison is 10 and JoJo is 9 so I opted to do the workbook version.  I can forsee the next step to cement the concepts would be to do it online as well.  It's important in this technologically advanced society to  teach your children about how to use apps and online banking.  I wanted to teach the concepts with the two littles first before stepping up to the online version.

This was designed for grades 5 &  up but could certainly be taught to 4th graders.  The concepts are clear and understandable.  The activities are clear and concise.  It's better if the child has some money and a goal to work toward to get the most out of it.  In our house, there are mandatory chores then paying chores.  The mandatory chores are the ones that have to be done every day just because you are a member of the family.  The paying ones are usually something that helps me out or are one of my chores.  Those are tallied up all week then payday is Wednesday just like Dad.  This made an income and expenses sheet easy to do.  

My favorite parts of this program were the budgets pages and the checks.  Madison enjoyed learning how to do the checks just like Logan was doing.  It made for some great discussions when she saw me writing checks for our bills. We post our budget on our refridgerator  where we can all look at it.  I had all the kids write their checks and do income and expenses every week with me.  It made for some really great conversations. This was a great learning experience for all of us!

There weren't really any cons to it.  It is a well laid program that teaches effectively.  I believe it would be a great pre cursor to high school finance class.  In my opinion,  a finance class should be required for graduation. Did you know 2 out of 3 high school seniors graduate without knowing the basics of budgeting? Maybe that's why our economy is in such a mess.  Do your kids a favor and start teaching them how to be responsible with their money .  The earlier the better!

This review is part of the Mosaics Reviews: A medley of review perspectives. To see other perspectives please visit their site!