Opening:

Excerpt:

Dave Ramsey: When they’re four and they clean up their room, we know, I cleaned up most of the room. He picked up a little bit of it but he gets all of the high-five, “atta-boys”, you’re the best room cleaner that God has ever made. You are a rock star room cleaner! And he walks around with his little chest stuck out with two one dollar bills in his hand. Something just happened.

End of Excerpt

John Fuller: Well indeed, something did just happen. That’s Dave Ramsey. And he’s our guest today on Focus on the Family. And he’s gonna help you teach your children about managing money. Your host is Focus president and author, Jim Daly. And I’m John Fuller.

Jim Daly: Hey, John, there’s nobody I’d rather talk to about finances than Dave Ramsey. He’s an expert. He’s the financial guru in this country, and we had the opportunity to be with him in Nashville, Tennessee, where he’s based, to discuss money management for children. And here at Focus on the Family, we want to equip you, the parent, to do the best job you can – and if you’re a grandparent, to help you help your grandkids, to teach younger children how to handle money. And it starts when they’re very young.

John: Yeah and of course, we have a lot of great resources for you. Just stop by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast or call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. And Dave Ramsey is the radio host of a nationally syndicated program, The Dave Ramsey Show. He’s a best-selling author, and he’s got a Financial Peace Jr. edition that really ties into today’s conversation. Let’s go ahead and listen in to today’s episode of Focus on the Family as we talk with Dave Ramsey in his own studios.

Body:

Jim: Hey, Dave, welcome back to Focus in Nashville.

Dave: Well, thank you. It’s an honor to be with you guys, an honor to have you in our home. We’re glad you’re here with us – obviously, not my home, but it is our – our offices.

Jim: Close enough. You…

Dave: Southern hospitality counts, so…

Jim: You probably live nearby, right?

Dave: Oh, about seven minutes. That’s my commute, yeah. But…

Jim: Okay, now we’re jealous. But, uh, let’s go right there with kids that are launching today, younger kids. It breaks your heart, I know, that kids are going off to college or maybe going off for vocational training – they’re just not prepared to manage money. They’re getting into debt way too soon. What’s happening in the psychology of the country that kids are messing up so quickly in that area of finances?

Dave: Well, there’s a whole lot of things going on, obviously. And, um, I think it’s kind of ironic that I get to do this with you guys. I mean, when I first met God, I was in my early 20s, and, uh, I didn’t know beans about anything. I was dumber than a rock. And, um, I turned on Christian radio. And there’s this thing on there called Focus on the Family, and, um, started teaching me how to be a good dad. And I bought a book called Strong-Willed Child because I had one.

Jim: That’s right, Dr. Dobson.

Dave: And that strong-willed child is Rachel Cruze, and she is now a New York Times’ best-selling author and speaks all over the world, and…

Jim: Working with you.

Dave: It worked out. She works on the team here. She’s one of our Ramsey personalities. So it’s quite an honor for me to get to sit here with you guys. Thank you.

Jim: Well, we so appreciate that.

Dave: That’s 30 years ago, you know?

Jim: Yeah.

Dave: And here I am, the fruit of this ministry – in a very real way, our family is. So you’re right, kids are under attack, just like people are under attack, when it comes to the money subject. And, um, the problems are – they’re just that we live in the most marketed-to culture in the history of the world, and kids are no exception. And moms and dads are out of control with their money, and so they don’t feel qualified to teach their own kids how to handle money.

Jim: Right.

Dave: They are qualified, but they don’t feel qualified.

Jim: Well, let’s start right there because I think, uh, in your material, that’s what you’re saying. Mom and Dad have to kind of get their act together if their kids are gonna to see a good model, right?

Dave: Exactly. Rachel and I did a book together called Smart Money, Smart Kids. And it’s the book for parents on teaching your kids how to handle money. It’s the implementation of the stuff in the Financial Peace Jr. Kit, in a way. And in that, Rachel says, “More is caught than taught.” And how many of us have opened our mouth, and our mom or our dad came out?

(LAUGHTER)

Jim: Yeah, right.

Dave: You know? No matter how many times I said I was never going to do that, I did it. I just did that. I just did that. And the same’s true with money. If your mom and dad are living in control with money, and they’re showing you how they’re doing that – Mom’s a couponer, they do a budget, we saved up and paid cash for this vacation and it’s a privilege to get to go on this vacation, um. Or if every time – the opposite of that, of course, is every time there’s stress, Mom goes and does retail therapy and runs up the credit card debt, or Dad goes and impulses a new car and says to Mom, look what I did, then there’s a big fight about money. You know, both think both types of families are out there.

Jim: Right.

Dave: And the little people are watching. They’re watching. And they’re going to do what you do. So the first thing parents can do to is teach your kids out of money to get their own act together.

Jim: And that’s a good first step right there. Um, you actually believe that teaching your kids about money can be fun. Now, we got to explore that because most parents will say, “Really, it’s fun to do that?” Why is it fun?

Dave: Well, because having some money gives you the option to do some stuff. Giving is fun. It really is fun. And what little kid doesn’t light up when they give? What little kid doesn’t light up when they get to go buy Celebration Barbie at Toys ‘R’ Them, you know? Buying stuff’s fun. It is. So money is fun. The trick is that we are teaching our kids not to be great children, but to become great adults. And if we teach our kids how to be great adults, that means we teach the fruits of the spirit, like self-control. And so the whole money thing is woven into a character development process that we need to teach our kids anyway. Most parents teach their kids to, you know, clean up the room. Why not attach some economic fun to that, you know?

Jim: Sure.

Dave: Most kids – teach the kid to mow the grass. I mean, my dad had me mowing the grass when I could just barely push the lawnmower, you know? Probably dangerous, but probably broke some child labor laws, but – you know? – but it didn’t kill me. It helped me learn how to work, how to sweat, how to get things done, you know?

Jim: Absolutely.

Dave: And so those kinds of things are just hugely valuable, and they are fun – if you don’t turn it into a formal – we’re going to have a mutual fund seminar on Tuesday night. Well, no 4-year-old wants to go to that.

John: It sounds, though – I can hear somebody saying, “Well, I shouldn’t have to pay my kid to clean their room. They should do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

Dave: They should, they should. I agree. We always had chores at our house that were three things. Uh, one was just ‘cause I said so, and we need some help. One was it’s an act of love to your mom. And then some stuff we did because we wanted to attach an economic value to it, because we want to, even a 4-year-old year old, to say, “When I do work, there’s money attached to that.” The eco – emotional tie between money and work can start really, really early. And I meet 54-year-olds that still don’t have that emotional tie. They still don’t know money comes from work, you know? I’m talking to ‘em, they’re going, I got money problems. Well, you got an income problem ‘cause you don’t work much, you know?

(LAUGHTER)

Jim: Right.

Dave: And it’s like, you could’ve taught them that at 4. But some things you do just ‘cause you’re loving your mom well, and some things you do ‘cause you’re part of the family, uh, because we just need some help, and I’m gonna do some things for you that way because I’m your dad.

Jim: I really like that.

Dave: And some things you do because I’m trying to create a teachable moment where that tie between the money and the work – money caused – is caused by work. We’re not sending them into the salt mines. When they’re 4 and they clean up their room, we know I cleaned up most of the room.

(LAUGHTER)

He picked up a little bit of it, but he gets all the high-five, “attaboys”, you’re the best room cleaner that God has ever made, you are a rock-star room cleaner. And he walks around with his little chest stuck out with two $1 bills in his hand. Something just happened.

Jim: Let me ask you this because some parents will have a more perfectionistic orientation, and they struggle with that. If the room’s not done well…

Dave: Yeah.

Jim: …Then you failed. And they can communicate that in so many ways. This is more of a parenting issue than a finance issue.

Dave: Yeah.

Jim: But even in this area of finances, we can really crush our little kids’ spirits, can’t we?

Dave: You’ve got to be age-appropriate is what it amounts to. I’m gonna expect a lot more excellence from a 12-year-old than I am a 4-year-old, you know?

Jim: Rightfully.

Dave: And a whole lot more from an 18-year-old. ‘Cause you’re getting ready to leave, and we hope you stay gone. So…

(LAUGHTER)

Jim: But age-appropriate, uh, yeah. Age-appropriate is the rule, yeah.

Dave: We’re not sending the 4-year – I’m not going to – there’s a lot of grace with a little kid. I’m just trying to get the concept in. And I meet these moms who are like, “No, he didn’t save up for the tax, he’s 4, and so he didn’t get to buy the toy.” Oh, my goodness, lady, lighten up…

Jim: Right.

Dave: …You financial Pharisee. Unbelievable, you know? It’s a little kid.

Jim: Well, let’s move into that a bit. You don’t like the word “allowance”, if I read the material correctly. I mean, you like more of a contract. This is the job, I’m hiring you. You set up a – a day – a payday for your kids.

Dave: Mmhmm. Mmhmm.

Jim: Just go through that methodology a little bit. Why is allowance, as a word or a term, uh, something you shy away from?

Dave: Well, words are powerful. They deliver a message. If I make allowance for you, it means you are deficit. It means that you’re lacking. You’re not capable. You don’t have dignity. You don’t have ability. So I have to make allowance for you. And, uh, I don’t want my kids thinking that way. I’m an entrepreneur, uh, and so we put our kids on commission. Work, get paid. Don’t work, don’t get paid.

John: So – so that’s the difference between commission and allowance?

Dave: No, a lot of parents pay allowance just exactly like that.

John: Okay.

Dave: It’s just a word, but to me, that word nuance transfers something in our culture. It doesn’t help the 4-year-old, but it helps the parents go, “This is about performance on this particular thing.” We’re going to have some grace on the 4-year-old, we’re going to be tougher on the 14-year-old, but this is about performance because, guess what – when you – everyone is on straight commission. All of you that think you’re on a salary, try not going to work for two weeks, see if they keep paying you, okay? Unless you take vacation time, you get paid when you go to work. You don’t go to work, you don’t get paid.

Jim: And this underlying theme, again, is to help your child launch as a young adult.

Dave: Exactly. And, you know, you put character traits in place child developmentally in this process that cause them to be able to win. So yeah, it’s just a simple thing. But then you have to have the discussion, even with the 6-year-old who didn’t feed the dog, and I had to feed the dog otherwise dog’s gonna get skinny, you know, “I had to do your dadgum work this week, kiddo. So you know what, you don’t get paid on the dog feeding part.”

Jim: And that’s great. Now some parents…

Dave: You want him to feel it a little bit.

Jim: You know, again, we’ve got to represent the parents out there, “That is too brutal, Dave. Man, really, c’mon – that’s too brutal.”

Dave: It’s not brutal.

(LAUGHTER)

It’s $2. He’s 6, he gets it. He knows what he didn’t do.

Jim: Right. And that reinforces it.

Dave: She knows – she knows she didn’t do that. Just like you don’t allow them to walk around and get D’s and F’s in school. You’re going to enforce some homework. They need to take a bath, and every 9-year-old boy lies about that…

Jim: At least every other day.

Dave: …You know, you need to teach them to bathe, right? I mean, these are parent basic life skills that we’re teaching them. And teaching someone to work, to give, to save and to spend appropriately are life skills. Age-appropriately, you develop that and more and more sophisticated as they go along, and ding, ding, you’ve got an adult that can function.

Jim: Now, let’s get practical. The 3 to 5 – let’s go through some of those ages and stages and things that you recommend. So 3 to 5, what are the chores that those kids can be expected to perform, generally?

Dave: Most of the time one thing or two things, maybe a room cleaning. And, again, Mom and Dad are really involved and actually doing the work, okay? So it’s – it’s a pep rally about room cleaning. It’s not, go to your room and clean it, you 3-year-old. What? You know. So you just do it age-appropriately, kid-appropriate – train up a child in the way he should go, and the way he is bent…

Jim: Right.

Dave: … The old King James says.

Jim: Sure.

Dave: The way he’s designed. And so you do it differently with different kids. But, again, something simple, and it’s just like, you’re 3 years old, you just did something that instantaneously, you don’t wait for a payday on a 3-year-old – right then. They did the work, here’s a little money. And it’s just a dollar. Wad it up, I’m gonna put it in a clear jar so it takes up space. You know, I want it to take – visually grow in front of you, and – ‘cause we’re trying to create a lesson. This is not an economic transfer. This is a lesson is all it is. It’s we’re trying to get a spiritual and philosophical something ingrained here.

Jim: Right, and again, two or three things, very simple, for the week that they can do. Six to 8? What about that age?

Dave: I’m gonna crank it up a little bit. At that age, I had a little chore list. And, uh, with our kids, we had about five things for them to do, and they got like, a buck a thing. Uh, inflation – you might be two bucks a thing now, I don’t know, but our kids are 30, so. A buck a thing. Feed the dog when you get up this week, you get your buck – dollar. You know, clean your room, you get your dollar. You help in the kitchen because you love your mom, that’s not on the list. You know, you got some other stuff here. And, uh, some parents put on there some behavior things as well, like language, um, or talking back or something, if they want to put something else on there. But I’ve basically put little chores of some kind on there, five things, and if you missed one of them, then you got $4. If you miss two of ‘em, you got $3. And we had payday on Sunday night, and we didn’t always do payday – sometimes we were busy, sometimes we forgot, sometimes I didn’t have enough $1 bills laying around. You know, so…

Jim: Now you’re talking my language.

Dave: My kids, actually, I had grace on me, in other words. But our kids actually, if you ask them, to this day, they think we did it every Sunday night. I don’t know how they think that, because we didn’t. We really weren’t that consistent.

Jim: Right.

Dave: But we just did it enough, and it was tied to it, and there was always a discussion – sit down on the couch, sit down on the floor, count out the ones. Okay, now get your little envelopes out.

Jim: So really involved?

Dave: Yeah, yeah, we’re going to have a little meeting here, and we’re going to call you out, and, you know, you didn’t do this, and so you don’t get paid on that. Good job on this. Last week you didn’t do it, you picked it up this week, and so high-five on that, kiddo. And, you know, they’re trash talking each other a little bit, you know.

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, it’s fun. And we just had a good time with it. It was 10 minutes.

Jim: Yeah.

Dave: But we had a little chore chart, and we check off if you did it or not. And if you didn’t do the work, you didn’t get paid. You’re on commission.

Jim: And it gets them used to that environment. This is it.

Dave: Because if you don’t work, you don’t get paid in the real world.

John: Dave Ramsey is our guest today on Focus on the Family. We’re talking about training your children to learn more about money and how to manage it well. And our discussion is based on Dave’s Financial Peace Jr., which offers hands-on nuts and bolts, age-appropriate content. And you’ll find that at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast or when you call 800-A-FAMILY – 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY.

Jim: Hey, Dave, we got to finish that train of thought now. We’ve got 3 to 5, 6 to 8. You’re ramping it up a little bit. What about 9 to 12?

Dave: Um, I’m going to add some complication to the chore. Feeding the dog is a very simple thing, but I want a complication to the chore where you actually have to think through the concept, not just a task.

Jim: Huh.

Dave: And so something a little bit more complicated. Um, if it were, for instance, yardwork, um, you not only have to cut the grass, you got to weed eat. You got to make sure the beds are mulched, and you got to make sure they’re weeded. And, um, you know, a little bit of a trimmin’ of the bushes. You need to think ahead of me and anticipate what I’m going to want if I want a great yard. And so I’m going to ratchet up my expectation there a little bit, get some conceptual thinking instead of just some concrete singular thinking. And that’s what we’re trying to encourage there. And that opens up their ability to do critical thought around the subject of economics.

Jim: Right.

Dave: Around the subject of money.

Jim: You also talk about, uh, developing your own small businesses for these kids – for the kids to do that. Is that harder today? I mean, I’m thinking our – our paper person drives a car, and, you know, tosses the paper out their window. Are there opportunities for kids still today to do those little things?

Dave: You know, it’s easier in some ways because they’ve got, uh, the internet tools available to ‘em. And so, um, a teenager that wants to babysit can jump on Craigslist.

Jim: That’s true.

Dave: And, um, they don’t have to walk door-to-door and hand out fliers like we would have done. Um, same thing if you wanted to do a dog walking service in the neighborhood, or, you know, what’s really big in – in a wealthy neighborhood or a semi-wealthy neighborhood is people going on vacation, and they want the kid to come up and babysit the dog at their house and check the house.

Jim: Right.

Dave: And they’ll pay a lot for that because if you priced a kennel while you’re on vacation, versus having the local kid come up, we got two or three kids in our neighborhood right now. We keep them busy when we’re gone…

Jim: Yeah.

Dave: With our puppies, you know?

Jim: That’s good. And to encourage it. Uh, what about the shy child? I mean, we’re doing that – kind of not the self-starter in that way, they’re a little more withdrawn just because of the way they’re made. How do you motivate a child that, “Yeah, that sounds good, but I really don’t want to do that”?

Dave: They’re not necessarily – you don’t have to be some kind of extrovert, um, you know, uh, miniature entrepreneur nerd kid to pull this off. You know, sometimes a shyer child can do something within their strengths. It could be writing. It could be something that they do in an introverted environment that still creates money. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s people interaction every time money is created because that’s also true in the real world. We’ve got shy children that work on our team now called adults. But they, uh, you know, a lot of them are our creatives. A lot of them are our content team. A lot of them are developers. And so, um, you’d be amazed what kind of web stuff a 14-year-old introverted kid can pull off.

Jim: Right.

Dave: And how much code they can write.

Jim: Let me…

Dave: They can probably build websites better than some adults.

Jim: So true. And, I guess, the more critical question is that self-starter mentality. That’s something a parent…

Dave: That’s not an inherent introvert thing.

Jim: Right. That’s something all parents…

Dave: Initiative is independent of character style.

Jim: Right.

Dave: Initiative is something you want to teach.

Jim: Right.

Dave: Um, and so that, you know, the world doesn’t owe you a living kind of stuff – old-school stuff, right? The world doesn’t owe you a living. You’re not a victim. You’re not stuck. If it’s to be, it’s up to me. You got to leave the cave, kill something and drag it home, bubba.

Jim: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

Dave: I mean, you’ve got to walk them through that because that’s gonna be their reality.

Jim: Oh, without a doubt.

Dave: And where our kids are so disappointed – if you talk to someone in their 20s today, who is so disappointed – is that they were set with an expectation that this was gonna be easy – this thing called life. And it’s not. It doesn’t have to be harsh, but it’s not easy.

Jim: Well, and children learn so much through a valley, right? And as a parent, if you can create that valley in such a way that will teach the lesson without terrible severity…

Dave: Yes.

Jim: …That’s a good thing.

Dave: Yeah, I want to do that because the severity – if you don’t teach them how to run their checkbook when they’re 16, they’ll learn it when they’re 36, and it’s very expensive.

Jim: Exactly right. I do want, on behalf of the listeners – for those parents or grandparents that are noticing their child or grandchild who doesn’t want to do chores, it’s more of a behavioral issue – what can you do to move them in a better direction? What did you do to motivate your kids that were maybe sluggish doing the chores?

Dave: Well, the way we looked at it was, we’re going to make it fun. We’re going to tie some money to it. And if that doesn’t move the needle, we got a problem later, okay? So we’re going to try all that stuff first. So let’s go back to our example of sitting in the living room floor on Sunday night paying out the commissions, and the dog hasn’t been fed for the third week in a row. Now what I’ve got is not an economic issue – I’ve not got a financial lesson problem – now I’ve got an obstinate kid that’s not doing what they’re told.

Jim: Exactly right.

Dave: And so this is like, three days in a row you haven’t brushed your teeth. As your dad, I love you so much, I am going to make you learn lessons that allow you to be successful as an adult. Those include doing your studies at school. Those include being kind to your sister. Those include work. And so this is no longer about whether I’m going to pay you or not. That didn’t seem to work. Now you’re just gonna feed the dog…

(LAUGHTER)

…Or you and I are going to have a different kind of problem…

Jim: So you just lay it out there.

Dave: …And you don’t want to have that problem. So because it’s my job as your dad to make sure you learn these lessons, honey, and if I allow you to just continually – I don’t wanna do it, I don’t wanna do it, I don’t wanna do it – at some point, I don’t want to do it when it comes to brushing your teeth, I don’t care. You’re brushing them anyway. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to study. I don’t care, you’re going to study. I don’t wanna do my chores. At some point, you’re not learning the lesson I need you to learn as your dad. It’s not that I need the dog fed. I can probably handle that, okay? It’s that I need you, as my son, as my daughter, to learn to work and tie that to money. And so at the end the day, it becomes a parenting thing of, are the inmates in charge or not?

Jim: Exactly right. Now, we’ve talked about that age-appropriate application and that approach to the appropriate chores, appropriate dollars. What do you think is reasonable today when you’re talking about that younger set – a dollar or two?

Dave: Yeah. You know, it – the funny thing is it doesn’t matter, you know? In that little bit, in those little ones, a buck for cleaning the room…

Jim: Right.

Dave: …Right then, a dollar right then, the $5 I did 30 years ago might still work. If you want to double it, you could double it. I don’t care. Some people say, you know, the amount of age you are, you know, per month or per week – your 14-year-old gets $14 a week or whatever – I didn’t do all that. By the time our kids got above 12, there was a lot more money involved in everything because their life was touching a lot more things. It gets more expensive…

Jim: It gets more expensive.

Dave: Right. You know, 3-year-olds don’t do the same stuff 13-year-olds do.

Jim: Maybe 20, 30 bucks – something like that.

Dave: Yeah, yeah. But I don’t want to turn into an ATM for the teenager.

Jim: Right.

Dave: So I’ve got to scale this up as they go along. So that 13-year-old – it’s not the first time they ever heard, “Oh, you have to work for money.” They’ve been hearing it since they were 3. So it’s not a new lesson. It’s just a new discussion of the same lesson. And that’s the problem. If you surprise a teenager who’s never had to do anything that now suddenly they have to do work, that – you’re going to have a problem.

Jim: Yeah.

Dave: You know, you’re gonna have a rebellion on your hands because it’s brand new information to them.

Jim: Now the fun part is spending.

Dave: Yeah.

Jim: So you’ve mentioned that. So how do we get to the spending part – the fun part – the “Weee!” part?

Dave: Well, what we did in Financial Peace Jr. was we put the chore chart in there for your refrigerator, so it’s dry-erase, so you can check off the chores. Then you have that payday, so work equals money. Then when you have the payday, you divide the money into three categories. There’s three envelopes in there – an envelope that says “Saving”, an envelope that says “Giving”, and an envelope that says “Spending”. So you get to spend your spending money. Now here’s where parents that are little too hardcore need to really have a lot of grace – let them blow their spending money.

Jim: Yeah. A lot of…

Dave: Let them mess up.

Jim: A lot of parents just went, “What?!”

Dave: Yeah. “That’s not a good thing!”

(LAUGHTER)

And they had this long discussion with this 8-year-old. Shut up, let them blow it. Let them just enjoy money a little bit. And now, if they get ready to buy something and they got two things, you go, “Okay, here’s something to think about. If you buy the cheap one, it’s gonna break in three weeks. If you wait a couple of weeks, you can buy the better built one, and you’ll probably have it to give to your kids.” Now, and you – then let them do it. Let them make the mistake. Let them make the mistake.

Jim: Yeah.

Dave: And if they buy the cheap one, when it breaks, you go, “Told you so. Now next time I’m giving you advice, I’m here to help ya. I’m not here to punish ya. I’m here to help – I’m guiding ya. I’m the older guy who’s been there, done that.” So you’d walk them through value propositions, but then let them mess up, as long as you help them learn the lesson while they’re messing up. They’re not gonna die over it. And the economics of the household are not gonna fall apart because they bought the wrong Barbie.

John: But Dave, there’s a whole ‘nother program there because “Let them mess up” might be one person’s approach to that child. But the spouse may not have the same perspective. In other words, this could be a marital conflict in the making. If I’m saying, “Go ahead and blow it, kid, I don’t care,” and my wife is saying, “Well, wait a minute, that’s not teaching him good – good responsibility.”

Dave: No, I’m not saying, blow it, kid, I don’t care. I’m saying, I care, I don’t think that’s a good idea, honey, but I’m gonna let you do it anyway because you’re gonna mess up. And I’m gonna remind you when you messed up because I’m teaching you on your spending. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s not laissez faire. I’m stepping back. But all parenting is a potential marital conflict.

(LAUGHTER)

Jim: And we all know that. It’s called pillow talk after the kids are in bed.

John: Yeah, I was speaking on behalf of – I was talking about a friend of mine.

Dave: Yeah, I know this guy. I know this guy.

John: Not me. I’ve never had this problem, yeah.

Jim: Yeah, without a doubt – Dave, this has been so good. There’s more questions we gotta get to. And, uh, let’s come back next time and cover more detail in this area. I, uh, so appreciate what you’ve done for adults and what you’re doing for children through Financial Peace Jr. And I’ve got teenagers, and I still need to apply some of these great ideas to their environment at 15 and 17. Could we do that? Could we come back next time?

Dave: Absolutely. I would be more than honored. I’m honored to be with you guys. Thanks for being here.

Closing:

John: And you’ll hear one last question from Jim to Dave in just a minute about what to do if you have a teenager and you haven’t taught them money management. Jim, are you there?

Jim: Yeah, I’m right there. Hey, I love Dave’s fresh and fun approach and I know I’ve been inspired, and I hope you have too to take a more active role with my kids when it comes to finances.

And as we’re kicking off a new year and making new financial goals, for our own kids and families, we’re also making them for Focus on the Family. And one of those goals is to get more friends like you to become a monthly supporter to Focus. When you commit to donating on a regular basis, you allow us to syndicate this broadcast, which means you allow us to pay the bills to air on stations around the country and around the world. You also allow us to expand our ministry by developing more online audio resources through our podcasting efforts to reach a younger generation, those 20 and 30 something married couples and moms and dads.

So if you listen regularly, but have never considered being a monthly supporter, could I ask you to pray about it? And if you can, support the ministry here at Focus on the Family to touch more lives. And if you make a monthly pledge today of any amount, I want to send you a copy of Financial Peace Jr. as a thank you gift. And as Dave mentioned, this includes a magnetic chore board, which I have found helpful when the kids were a little younger, envelopes to keep the dollars organized and an activity guide and stickers and guidelines for each age group. This is a great exercise to teach your kids or your grandkids about finances.

John: And if you’re not able to make a monthly pledge right now, perhaps you can make a one-time gift and we’ll gladly send you the kit, Financial Peace Jr. You can also get a download of the free resource called, “Avoiding Chore Wars” with your kids at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast or when you call 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY.

Let’s go ahead Jim and hear that last question that you had for Dave Ramsey.

Jim: Dave, right at the end, the parents that are saying, we have blown it – we have that 14, 15-year-old, we haven’t done these things, they don’t handle money well, we’ve always looked the other way. What hope do they have? What can they do?

Dave: If you had blown it with your 14 or 15-year-old in another area of parenting and you ignored that area up until this time, what would you do? I know what I would do. I would sit down with them and go, “Guys, I’ve really messed up. You’re 14 and I never talked to you about this. I should have been talking to you about this since you were 4. I’m so sorry. The bad news is your dad is messed up. The good news is I’m going to fix it. And the bad news is that means you’re going to have some problems. I’m getting ready to bring some problems into your life because I just discovered that I have goofed up as a dad, and I’m going to fix that but you’re not going to like it. So here we go. Get ready to ride.”

Jim: I love it. I love it.

Dave: “I apologize for the mess up, but that doesn’t mean I surrender my rights as a dad. As a matter of fact, I’m taking my job as Dad really seriously, my job as Mom really seriously, going forward. And it’s stuff you’ve never done, and you’re going to be uncomfortable. I’m probably going to be uncomfortable doing it. But, dude, I got to teach you this because you’re not going to be a man, you’re not going to be a full grown woman if I don’t teach you these skills. And I – we’re late to the party, but we’re going to the party.”

John: Some great concluding thoughts from Dave Ramsey and I hope you’ll join us tomorrow for more. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, I’m John Fuller thanking you for tuning in and inviting you back again as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ.