A Kid’s Guide to Managing Money
A Children’s Book about Money Management
Wilt
1979
We have featured a couple of Joy’s books here on the website and I found this other one lurking in my own collection! Yikes! This title, like all her others, are over 100 pages. I can’t see any kid sitting down with this title and holding out for 100 pages plus of annoying pictures and text.
Mary
Inevitable that Joy Wilt Berry would pop up again. I think my parents still have a collection of her works stored away somewhere.
I notice the Federal Reserve now has a branch in Waco!!
And yes, L.B., it was. I wonder what title will be next?
Judging from the publication date, I imagine that some of the “financial advice” in this would be out-of-date. I know that when I was growing up, during the 1980s, children were always being advised to put their pocket money in the bank, so that they could earn interest on it. Excellent advice back then, when the banks in my part of the world (Australia) DID pay good interest on even the smallest savings accounts; pretty much useless now, when any account with less than a certain amount in it (that amount being far, far more than the average child would be expected to have) has money taken OUT of it every month in the form of account-keeping fees. Hell, even accounts with large amounts of money in them pay, for the most part, miserable rates of interest (with my current account, for example, I think it’s something like one or two dollars every month for every *ten thousand* deposited). Grr.
Some banks still allow minors to open accounts that will gain (TINY) amounts of interest but don’t have a monthly charge.
The hard part is that it’s very easy for the kid to forget the account, or that when they reach a certain age, it switches into a normal account that does start charging. This actually happened to my childhood bank account!
Probably better these days to open a “Bank of Mom and Dad” and let the kid learn how to store their money that way.
As for the book, golly, but a lot of kids books seem to have unintentionally bad asian racism.
My in-laws still use old ledge books like the one he is holding for their small business. I say it looks like the guest registry for the Bates’ Motel. Shudder!
Well, at least page 79 stresses the importance of using the library.
I think a financial advice book for kids is fine but like Zosimus said this book’s info is most likely out of date because things in banking have drastically changes since the 70s and not for the better.
The problem with “finding the owner” of lost money is that if you go up to someone and say “did you lose this $20 bill”, of *course* they’ll say yes and take it (even if it wasn’t theirs to begin with).
I remember when my nieces and nephews were born my mom opened up small bank accounts for them. She made the mistake of putting their parents names on the accounts however and my brothers took all the money out to buy stuff for themselves.
Bet you won’t find a “What to do if your parents steal your money to buy drugs” section in Joy’s book!
didi: QUIET! Need I remind you that you are in the (Awful) Library?!
That art! it’s SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK!
@Zosimus and Kaete–Some banks still have free accounts, and as far as I know, all of them give interest (although I suppose if they charge a fee, it more than cancels that out). I’m also not sure I buy that the amount is higher than most kids would have (especially since, as pointed out, most don’t charge fees for kids). I looked at two and the minimums were $100 and $400. It’s actually REALLY easy for a kid to get $100. I started my bank account at age 7 with $11 and had over that in a year or two, with no allowance or anything, just from birthday money, tooth fairy money, and not spending all of the money I was given when they just randomly gave me money (not a frequent occurrence and never in large amounts). It’s not really that much money. The 10 year old I used to babysit for had about that in her piggy bank, again with no allowance or anything. Remember, kids don’t have expenses. All their money is straight income, and if they actually save, it adds up quick.
Credit unions – a more benevolent alternative.
I’ve had a credit union account – the same one – since I was 11 or 12. The turnover in the (small) staff is slow, so they know me and my whole family, and my loan history and income and everything else. I don’t feel like I have to be on the defensive against them.
As for the book, 100+ pages? Wow. I would never have read that as a kid, especially with those illustrations.
If I’d read the parent one as a kid I’d have been tiptoeing around for a year expecting to see signs of work failure and drug addiction and whatever other awful stuff it has in that book.
I’m just looking at the drawing of the buck toothed Chinese girl. So not PC.
Yes, racist images of the Chinese AND a librarian stereotype, complete with QUIET sign, thank the Good Lord it’s 3 decades old and weed away.
Presumably the money on the cover from Waco was printed by David Koresh and the Branch Davidians?
As Alice said: Curiouser and curiouser…
Warren Buffet has a cartoon for kids now, it started this Sunday. Not sure it’s an improvement over this book, though.
Mary-We had the whole set of these when I was a kid. Probably at least 20 books, give or take. And I DID read them all. Granted, I’m a bit of a nerd, but yeah, I liked them. I liked the illustrations and the information. Then again, I would read my parents’ schedules from work just because I liked knowing things and reading. But, there was at least one kid that would read those 100 pages of text.
I’m looking at the first content image, and… Yeah. Wow.
I’m guessing the artist went to the ‘Max Fleischer School of Cultural Sensitivity for Cartoonists.’ (The guy that drew Tintin was a graduate.)
Much like how G.W. Bush’s staffers prayed he would never have to read the word ‘Niger’ off a TelePrompTer during a speech about Africa, I pray this artist never has to draw a black man. Or a Pakistani. Or a Mexican. Or…
I’m not clear on what makes “glue for model airplane” fall under the NEED category when skateboard wheels (used for getting to the hobby shop?) and fishing pole (supper?) are both WANTs.
How come balloons are a ‘need’ not a ‘want’?
We had a few of these when I was a kid, and I read them cover to cover, probably more than once. (Didn’t have this one, though, so far as I recall.)
I would read anything, and we lived in the middle of nowhere, so I couldn’t get to a library on my own, so I read every book we had more than once,. These were better than some of the alternatives.
I could use an entire book on the logic used in distinguishing the “needs” from “wants” on the final page. If my needs in life consist of a bicycle chain, glue, socks and latex, I’m either a fetishist, a serial killer or a mafia enforcer.