What I want for Christmas

In a few days it will be November 5^th. What this has to do with Christmas you ask? Well once Halloween and Guy Fawks night has gone there’s a free run, straight through to Christmas.

Before I had children I used to love the run up to Christmas. It was exhausting as I had lunches and parties   to attend and organise, lots of deadlines to meet before the holidays kicked in. The 6 weeks leading up to the big day were exhausting, I would turn up at my parents, and Christmas would be laid on as slept my way through to New Years eve; only waking for another trip to the dining table or stretching to reach the remote control.

Now I have kids things are V-E-R-Y different. Expectations are so high, and you can only spread yourself and your money thinly. Secret santa gifts, gifts for the teachers; that’s just for starters, every child has to have a Christmas card, even these are competitive now with each one having to contain chocolate, no nuts please!! Say the letters. Then come the Christmas lists,  which have to bought before the ridiculously long school holiday kicks in. Add the visit to Santa at the theme park or supermarket and the weekly trip to supermarket buying bits and pieces. Phew, the next few weeks once the jack o lantern has shrivelled and ears stop ringing from the fireworks, are very expensive.

This year is going to be tough for everyone. I’m not sure many people are being flash with their cash this year, preferring to be cautious as who knows what’s round the corner. But there will be some people who will go out and spend huge amounts on giving their children and their families a massive ‘blow out’ Christmas which they can ill afford. They will grin from ear to ear right through until early January when the credit card bills turn up and they begin paying for their Christmas right through 2011.

I urge anyone this year to STOP before getting out your credit card and providing a Christmas you can’t afford. It’s one day, one season and the plastic bits and pieces, if its anything like my household, will not be intact by New Years Eve!

Take my advice and simplify Christmas.

1)      Engage:  Have a family meeting and tell everyone that this year, just for a change, it’s going to be different. Tell them why (be age appropriate as you don’t want to give nightmares about nasty Bill!)

2)      Have a group plan: Chat with other parents and set a limit so your child doesn’t feel he is ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’ pester power is born in the playground.

3)      Cut Down: Do they need so many toys, what about one significant present which lots of family members have contributed to.

4)      Be Creative and resourceful: What can you make? If you are handy there are lots of sites to give you great ideas. What can you swap? You’ve heard about clothes swapping what about kids toys swapping. Lots of things on this years must have list were on last years list. What can you buy much cheaper? As well as Ebay, there’s car boots, charity shops, freecycle and the newspaper classifieds, once they are  in the shiny wrapping paper they’ll never know!!

5)      Clear out: When your children present you with their Christmas lists agree to clear out the clutter from previous gift explosions. If it’s anything like my household there will be un-played with gifts that a charity shop will welcome.

6)      Just Say No: It’s our job as parents to educate our children. If just saying no and explaining why makes them less consumerist then I am all for it.

7)      Finally Give your time: Think about ways you can make Christmas fun without the commercialism. It’s the memories that make Christmas not the money spent, a walk in the park, a snowball fight (weather permitting) and a family game of Cluedo, Monopoly or our own personal favourite Rumicub are what family Christmas’s are all about.

I thought I would share with you a story a friend of mine told about his solution to taking the commercialism out of Chritmas.

You mentioned about any stories about the whole ‘ahhhhhh’ at Christmas. Kids pestering and being pestered and not knowing what it’s all really about…

2 years ago this Christmas I took the family to Salzburg because I was so annoyed at the frantic “I want this”, “I’ve got that”, “Can I open another”, “When’s Uncle x arriving?” (meaning when’s my next present arriving) etc. My kids are great and they’re not greedy and are certainly not rude with the want – but it all just came to this massive peak when Owen (9) got all the latest Dr Who stuff (all) and didn’t really know who’d brought what and Sophie (2) was getting all the latest pink plastic stuff because people thought they had to buy it!!

We took a breather from the whole thing and we all enjoyed the period more than usual.

We were told by too many of them to mention that no, this was not something they would or could support as it was not in their interest to support something which effectively was working toward a long term goal of eradicating debt. I was more recently at a dinner where a very senior investment banker, who apparently only dealt with £1million plus clients, gave me the same thoughts so things, unfortunately, have not changed.

I recently visited EDF Energy www.savetodaysavetomorrow.com – an energy company with over 5.5million UK customers. They are one of the main sponsors of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games You’d think, as an energy company, they would want customers to keep on using energy without regard to making savings – be that saving energy or money, never mind the need for us all to reduce energy use to help tackle climate change. However, EDF Energy are effectively marketing to their customer base to use less energy. Fuzzy logic or socially responsible marketing?  

EDF Energy wants to be at the forefront of social change, they have a climate change and energy conservation programme aimed at schools. www.jointhepod.org They’re impressive, transparent and a forward-thinking organisation. With this in mind I want to sign up with them, their marketing message says to me: we understand the climate change issue and are working to find solutions, me being part of it means that I am supporting them and not adding to the problem.

On the other hand what are the banks doing? They all give to a fund which is organised by PFEG (Personal Finance Education Group) PFEG is where teachers can go and find resources to help them teach children about money, savings and investments. If you look at many of these resources you will see they are all about accepting debt as part of life and how to manage it. This is a bit like an energy company encouraging customers to get used to power cuts! Banks encourage children’s recognition of credit cards, after all it’s with this ‘flexible friend’ they will make lots of money with in the future. There is very little for the primary age child.

Of course there are children’s savings accounts but very little active engagement with children. This is the parents’ job, not the schools (though as we speak there are plans to get this included on the curriculum but we will see where the new government’s priorities lie!!) The banks are there to make money and though they will offer you lip service with child savings accounts, their heart is not in it. Not yet anyway!

That’s why we at http://www.saveabitspendabit.co.ukare delighted to support the Which: Britain needs better banks campaign. www.bnbb.org

This may be an unusual example as fewer people turn left on aircrafts as turn right or even travel on aircrafts with a dividing curtain and service! But what ever your family income; how and what you are teaching your kids about a subject that will be in their adult hood a consuming subject.
Unsurprisingly, money is a major factor in the causes of arguments in families. A recent study for Scottish Widows found -:
• 10% of those who had a will said they wanted to ensure their estate did not go to someone they did not like.
• 20% of arguments over wills stemmed from claims that an estate was divided unfairly
• About 5% of rows occurred when someone found out they were not to receive an item apparently verbally promised to them
• The majority of the arguments were said to be between brothers and sisters, with 42% never speaking to each other again after the argument.
Relate the relationship mediation service says “money is one of the major causes of rows, couples ignore the issue at their peril; Arguments over money can be a symptom of a problem with a relationship but attitudes towards money can cause rows in themselves, if one of you is a spendthrift and one of you is very careful with cash you will row about saving for example.”
Helping your children open up and discuss money will help them in their relationships with you, their family and anyone who joins their life in the future.

5 Myths about children’s savings
1) Children will learn about finance and money through the education system
Unfortunately not, there is no curriculum content for personal finance education for primary school children. Therefore who and when will start it start in your family? Remember a teacher can only teach from their own perspective or from books which is another’s. Every family has a culture, a way of doing things, which is unique to that unit. Therefore the best place to initiate these conversations in the home
2) Money, saving and finance can not be taught but learnt through experience
Though the best lessons are the one’s learnt through experience, how will you manage your children’s experiences? Allowing them to make a few small mistakes now and help them learn the valuable lessons that will stand them in good stead in the future.
3) My kids are too young to be bothered by all this adult stuff
Children are hugely resilient. They are also wonderfully curious. As Mary Poppins said “in every job that must be done there is an element of fun, you find the fun and SNAP the job’s a game” make a game out of saving money and other precious resources and see how fast it catches on.
4) I have a good attitude to money so there is no reason why my kids will not also

You have a good attitude to money in your own reality in this time. The world is changing fast; what the average family do now will be severely lacking in the future. Think recycling, environmental footprint and poverty. The problems that surround these issues will get dramatically worse and our children’s generation will be the one’s looking to make a difference just as you are now.

5) I don’t have the money to save for myself so how am I going to save for my children
Saving is not just about saving money; it’s protecting the resources you have and creating a long term saving strategy.
www.saveabitspendabit.co.uk has a number of free resources to help parents and teachers inspire a healthy saving and spending habit in children including an audio storybook download about Stu Spender and Davey Saver and parents coaching handbook containing money saving tips and advice.

Imagine this, you never teach your children good manners, you never show them how to hold a knife and fork properly, which cutlery to use, where to put a napkin, how to sit at the table, how to chew. You expect the primary school to do it for you as they are the ones supposed to be educating your child.

 This scenario is completely unthinkable. Of course you as a parent bring your children up to be socially acceptable at table, the thought of leaving this role to chance, to schools or to society is unthinkable. I would hazard a guess that almost every day from birth onwards you are guiding and teaching your children how to have good manners, from “sit nicely” to “ have you washed your hands” to “what do you say when you wish to leave the table?”  So why do we leave the concept of money, potentially the root of all evil!!, to chance and to a society who’s money values, financial understanding and monetary control are out of control.

 I chatted to a group of parents recently and the following comments emerged. “we didn’t really bother too much with pocket money the children just got what we thought they should have” “pocket money is a waste of money as they just spend it on rubbish” “ I tend to give it to them when I remember and they spend the money on sweets so I don’t give it to them as I don’t want them to have it”

 Saveabitspendabit is a website which is designed to help parents teach children about money, how to save it as well as how to spend it.

 We at saveabitspendabit  believe whole heartedly that parents are in an ideal position to teach their children the value of money by giving them pocket money and teaching them how to manage it from an early age, as young as 6 or 7.

 “ Children learn by example but it is human to make mistakes, and by making financial errors at 6 will keep them out of debt when they are 16 or 26 or 36” .

 If a child blows their pocket money on a big bag of sweets one day and sees a power ranger they would dearly love to own  the next day what will happen? Yes they will nag but it is our job as parents to teach them the lesson of careful spending and regular saving so the ‘penny drops’ for the future.

 “ I know of parents who dread the weekly shopping expeditions. The I wants’, can I have’s the you’re so means are difficult to cope with especially when you already feel so guilty as you leave them in extended child care due to your long working hours.

 But, hasn’t it always been thus? Every generation has its challenges of its own time. We are a society of mass consumerism, marketing messages come at us from every direction in bright shiny colours and it is very very hard not to have your head turned as a child and think I want.

 However; if as parents we always give in to our kids, what will be teaching them. At best and this is the best scenario, the bank of mum and dad will pay, at worst they will buy it immediately with a credit card which the banks are eager to dish out to our ‘tweenies’ with no coaching or control, and there’s little you can do about it.

 A whole generation has now grown up with the instant gratification their flexible friend affords them. This generation are now having children and so breeding a throng of children who have never had to wait for anything. Fast food, 24 hour TV and instant credit.

 The largest group of rising bankrupts are in the 16-24 year old range. They now see bankruptcy as a financial solution to their problems, this is a scary state of affairs, these people will be outsiders of the community, not able to afford to get on to the housing ladder, which will reduce the amount of first time buyers on the market in the next few years, only to be able to deal in cash and so borrowing from expensive loan sharks to fund their spending addiction.

 Times have changed and every decade is different and has very different challenges but if the credit crunch which we now experience is a wake up call to the mass consumerism we have ‘enjoyed’ over the last few years then I say ‘bring it on’.

 The credit crunch has meant families have had to budget more, they have to plan more, they are spending more time together. Brilliant! Hopefully this time can be used to enjoy each other and instill some money values and money common sense that will stop the spiral a spiral of debt that could lead to a very unhappy future.

 www.saveabitspendabit.co.uk inspiring children to save.