Stephanie Brooke Lennon
Bring Out the Best in Yourself and Your Family
Discover Proven Secrets for Raising Money-Smart Kids!
WORRIED YOUR KIDS ARE CLUELESS ABOUT MONEY - MAKING YOU THEIR INFINITE MONEY SUPPLY?
LET YOUR KIDS PRACTICE WORKING WITH THE MONEY YOU ALREADY BUDGETED FOR THEM
This incredible training course shows parents how to set up the framework for a family banking system WITHOUT costing a dime more than you already planned to spend on your kids
You know your kids won't be under your roof forever - at least we hope not. They'll need to understand how to handle money, without texting home for more, more, more because they blew through it all.
It can be frustrating telling your kids NO - but if you said yes to every request, you'd be broke and angry. They don't seem to get it.
Maybe you tried to set up an allowance. You give them everything and they still want more, like they don't understand the value of money.
Have you ever wished the schools would teach personal finance?
Has talking about money made you uncomfortable, let alone talking with your kids about it? It can feel awkward. Taboo even.
I see you. I was you.
I'm happy you're here because I HAVE to share with YOU a proven system that works incredibly well in our household and many others. I call it the Raising Wealthy Kids course.
Let me ask you this:
Does the idea of giving your kids MORE SPENDING POWER now seem like the worst plan ever?
How about the idea of letting your kids go broke - and letting THEM deal with the natural consequences?
Truthbombs:
Kids CAN handle learning about money from a very young age. Our youngest was 5 1/2 when she started handling money. While it wasn't much, it didn't take her long to figure out how to play the game.
Kids also CAN understand the idea of making tradeoffs. Once given the rules of the game - they are natural problem solvers.
Personal Finance is a key adulting skill. Only 26 states require a financial literacy course for high school graduation. Even so, one course is not enough. It's up to us parents to teach our kids about money.
You - and me.
What if there was a proven framework that you could easily tailor to your family's needs and implement immediately?
There is.
Introducing the Raising Wealthy Kids course.
Key Framework Elements:
These are some of the highlights I teach in Raising Wealthy Kids
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Create an open dialogue in your home about money. How does your household bring in money, and how does your family prioritize spending, saving, investing, and giving?
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Create spending power for your kids through allowance and/or kidpreneurial ventures. Identify places you were going to spend on them and let them decide how to spend that budget.
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Establish a forced savings rate and set this portion of earnings aside for the future in a high-yield savings account or brokerage.
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Stop buying your kids discretionary stuff from this point forward (excluding holiday and birthday gifts of course!). They have their own spending money to use, within the guardrails you set.
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Automate and empower. You got this!
Sample Wins:
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Fewer NOs. The kids' spending accounts tell them whether or not they may buy the fabulous thing they want
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Nobody throws extra items into Mom's shopping cart
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Kids have direct access to their spending balances, originally via Google Sheets; now a banking app complete with Debit Cards [they feel SO cool]
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Kids practice making tradeoffs on where they want to use their spending money, and if it's worth working more to spend more, if used is better than new, and if there's a way to pool resources
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Kids ask to do extra work around the house when they want to buy something beyond their current means
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Children went in together to buy a shared gaming system and the games for it
- More school supplies are recycled vs. blindly buying new
- Halloween costumes have been upcycled, homemade, bought, and upgraded as each child saw fit
- Son bought a secondhand laptop instead of buying new
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Kids love checking out Buy Nothing for priceless giveaways
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Each kid maintains their own aquarium, paying for fish and supplies as needed
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Daughter started a neighborhood pet care business, eventually forming an LLC and opening a business bank account
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Kids are saving 50% of earned income. Long term savings balances grew large enough to open Vanguard accounts
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Son is earning and saving for an expensive Scout camping trip, setting aside money for this goal well in advance
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Each kid has a reasonable set of chore responsibilities, tied to their allowance. The parents have more help around the house.
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Children occasionally work for the family small business. The documented earned income allowed them to open RothIRAs
Are you a Small Business Owner?
There are even more opportunities to get your kids involved in your business, reaping benefits for them and for you.
When your children work for your business, their earnings are expenses, just like any other contract or full-time employee. This reduces your business net income and therefore taxes.
On the flip side, children under 18 working in their family business do not owe Social Security or Medicare taxes.
Anyone under the Standard Deduction is exempt from federal income taxes - and many state income taxes as well.
Putting extra spending power in their pockets gives your kids the opportunity to practice more spending, saving, and investing - and practice makes proficient.
This is all great - but who the heck am I?
Hi - I'm Stephanie Brooke Lennon, a financial educator and activist. I help parents just like you raise money-smart kids.
My parents raised me with a solid understanding of money management and a deep appreciation for earning, saving, spending, investing, and giving money.
I didn't know it's not normal for parents to teach financial literacy.
Clearly, you and I are extraordinary.
After working in the banking industry for over a dozen years and seeing how much financial trouble otherwise smart adults can get into, it became my passion to equip the next generation with money management skills.
First I thought the schools need to do better - and they do.
But then I realized it must start in the home where values originate. I don't want a bureaucrat deciding how to shape my kids' point of view on money no matter what end of the political spectrum they favor.
For over 5 years, my husband Rich and I have been managing the First Lennon Family Bank. Our kids get almost daily opportunities to make financial decisions ranging from whether or not to buy school lunch to helping shape our family vacation itinerary.
We're not perfect - but the system WORKS. Our kids are learning and practicing and building muscle memory on how to handle finance. They know how hard it is to earn a dollar, and they make their spending decisions accordingly.
It was so incredibly successful that I wrote two books about it, and created a course to share this methodology and the secrets to make it successful in your home.
YOU don't need to be perfect either. You just need to get started.
Our Raising Wealthy Kids course is the place to begin.
You are 100% in the right place.
I'm living proof. My students are living proof. You will be too!
Need More Incentive?
The gap in life expectancy between people in the top and bottom 1% of household income is 10.1 years for your daughters and 14.6 years for your sons.
One could conclude that teaching your kids about money is a life-and-death decision.
It turns out that health and wealth are deeply connected. They're causal upon each other.
Health begets wealth - healthy people are wealthier.
Healthier people are more present at work, more creative, more energized, and more likely to be tapped for that next big project, or promotion. Time isn't lost due to fatigue, illness, and sick visits.
On the flip side, healthier people aren't crippled by medical debt which racks up faster than lightning if you're hit with a major illness. 66.5% of bankruptcies are caused by medical debt.
Wealth begets health - wealthy people are healthier.
Besides the obvious advantages wealthy folks have in access to high quality food, nicer, safer neighborhoods, and less economic-driven stress, there are many more subtle but powerful advantages.
Poorer folks struggle with doctor visits when they don't have reliable transportation or if time off puts their job at risk. They may debate between a copay vs. groceries. With higher rates of substance abuse and less green space for safe exercise, poor communities suffer.
I talk about this and so much more in the Raising Wealthy Kids course. It's eye-opening.
We owe it to our kids.
Frequently Asked Questions about the Raising Wealthy Kids course
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My family doesn't have a ton of discretionary budget. How can I put this framework to use?
It's easy - even without discretionary money to give your kids (e.g., via allowance), you can involve your kids in making family spending decisions and in spending on things you were going to buy anyway. I promise!
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I’m not comfortable talking to my kids about our family money. It feels like it’s not their business.
I highly recommend you reconsider this point of view. If they don’t learn about money from you, they’re left to their own devices, which could be peers or the internet. Worst case, it’s the school of hard knocks, and the real world isn’t nearly as forgiving as their parents will be.
If you'd like some dinner table discussion topic starters, here's a free list.
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I've tried allowances and chores in the past, but we just forget. How is this different?
Automation is key - anytime you have the chance to automate part of the process (e.g., in paying allowances, or in tracking your kids's spending), DO IT.
Furthermore, once you share with your kids what you're doing, they'll likely be your reminder!
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What do you mean by let my kids go broke?
This is a tremendous learning experience. Once the child runs out of spending money, they’ll need to either earn more or just not spend. It’s a great opportunity for them to learn that broke is temporary, and that they don’t like being broke (a strong reminder to avoid this situation in the future).
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You said your kids have debit cards now, but mine are too young. How do you handle tracking their spending?
We started with a shared Google Sheets ledger, that we parents had edit access for, and they had read-only access via their chrome books. You're welcome to take a free copy of the Google Sheets ledger off my website!
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My kids are young - how do I get them involved in chores? I'm not comfortable with them using cleaning solutions.
There are a lot of ways to get all kids involved. The younger ones often want to help! Take a look at this free list of age-appropriate chore ideas for kids from 2 to teen
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How on earth can a kid earn legit money? Doesn't it all boil down to allowance and us giving them cash?
Not at all! Some families choose not to give allowances. Kids have tons of opportunities to earn money, in alignment with their particular interests - pets, lawn/garden, childcare, tutoring, odd jobs, online pursuits - the opportunities are endless. For some ideas - check out this free downloadable of Kidpreneur thought starters.
Final Thoughts
Enjoy the Raising Wealthy Kids course.
Your kids are worth it.
Protecting your retirement nest egg is worth it.
Empowering the next generation of financially literate young folks is worth it.
For less than $200 you can set up your kids for a lifetime of financial success.
Wait - you and I can do even better than that. For less than $100 you can set up your kids for a lifetime of financial success. That's better.
I'm so excited to have you test drive the Raising Wealthy Kids course that for a very limited time, I am offering 50% off the course with promo code FIRST50 to the first fifty people to use it.
Teach your kids about money - it's so important.