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It’s never too early to educate your children about good
financial skills. If you want to give the kids on your list
something special this year, consider gifts that will teach
them how to handle money. It will reward them for years
to come.
Toddlers: Piggy banks are a wonderful gift. Little ones
adore listening to the clink of coins dropping into the bank,
and can spend hours putting money into the bank and taking
it out again. It’s great for motor skills, too.
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Preschoolers: Children this age love to feel grown up by playing at using ATM cards, checking out items at the grocery store, or paying for a meal. If you provide them with the tools they need, you will lay the groundwork for a lifetime of good money management. There are many great toys that will satisfy your child’s hunger to play with bills, coins, cash drawers and big numbers. Among them are the Pretend and Play Calculator Cash Register from Learning Resources; a plastic ATM Savings Bank (Summit Financial Products); the Jar O’ Money and Checkbook set (Summit Financial); Li’l Chefs Cash Register (Imaginarium); and the talking Cash Register with Scanner, (Imaginarium). As a terrific complementary gift, consider buying your child the Super Shopper Shopping Cart with Groceries (Small World Toys). (All items, along with prices and reviews, are available at Amazon.com.)
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Kids in Elementary School: A wallet for allowance money is a nice gift your child will be proud of. It will help him or her to organize money and track spending, too. Board games, of course, can always be counted on as an inexpensive way to provide hours of fun while learning about the value of money. Check out Moneywise Kids (Imaginarium). It consists of two games developed to help kids
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make change and budget money. Don’t forget about the traditional favorite, Monopoly. This game teaches you to count money and make change while learning about the value of real estate. The Game of Life provides many of these lessons as well. (All products can be purchased easily through Amazon.com.)
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Age 10 and Up: Consider the gift of money. The best way for children to learn about wise spending and the value of money is to give them some to manage and track on their own. They will quickly realize that if it is spent frivolously today, they won’t have any for tomorrow.
A great management tool is a passbook savings account. Instead of handing your child a $20 bill, deposit it into the account, and give him the passbook. Kids love to track their deposits and the interest earned. This should provide them with an incentive to start depositing part of their allowance, birthday money, or earnings from baby-sitting or other odd jobs.
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| A share of stock is another great way to encourage your kids to save and to learn to use money wisely. It is also a terrific introduction to the financial pages of the newspaper. To make it more fun, select a company your kid knows (Coca Cola, for example). Choose one that’s going up in value and you just might have an investor for life. Try OneShare.com. Your child can select from among 130 companies; the stock certificates come framed, if you like. |
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Information on Government Recalls on Toys
Consumer information from six federal agencies about product recalls involving
toys, drugs, food, cosmetics, pesticides, cars and boats can be found at
www.recalls.gov. The new one-stop site is the work of the Consumer Product
Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Coast
Guard, and the Agriculture Department.
"This should make it a lot easier for consumers," said CPSC Chairman Harold D.
Stratton. "Most people don't know what particular product" is regulated by
which government agency, Stratton said. "It's often hard to know where to go,"
and this site eliminates that problem, he added.
The site has about two dozen sponsors, which promote it. These include Wal-Mart
Stores Inc. and Toys R Us, safety-testing organizations such as Underwriters Laboratories, and consumer-safety groups such the National Safe Kids Campaign
and the First Candle/SIDS Alliance.
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