9 ways to make your kids smarter about money-By Jonathan Clements

Teach lessons about money using ordinary life

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Forget having the talk. Instead, have many talks.

If you sit your children down and endeavor to share all of your hard-earned financial wisdom, you likely will quickly lose your audience. A better approach: Try to weave small financial lessons into everyday conversations, building up your children’s money savvy with repetition and real-life examples.
“The whole ‘Pull back the curtain and share the information’ may make great movies, but it doesn’t make great real life,” says Holly Isdale, founder of Wealthaven in Bryn Mawr, Pa., which advises wealthy families on financial issues. “You have to have these discussions all along. Everything is a teaching moment.”
Want to raise money-smart children? Here are nine ways to boost their financial acumen:
Discuss their allowance. Barbara Nusbaum, a New York psychologist specializing in the emotional side of money, advises having children divvy up their weekly allowance into three buckets: spend, save and share.
“An allowance is invaluable,” she says. “That allows you to have small talks about money all the time,” including what your children plan to buy, what they are saving for and what charities they want to support.
Review the cellphone bill. “When my daughter graduated elementary school and got her first phone, I took the chance to dive into the phone bill,” says Tim Ranzetta, founder of NextGenPersonalFinance.org, which offers personal-finance educational materials for high-school and college students.
With his daughter, now age 12, Ranzetta emphasized that data usage drives the total monthly cellphone bill, which is why it is worth using Wi-Fi networks whenever they are available.
Share the credit-card bill. As financial statements arrive, you might review them with your children. For instance, you could show them the credit-card bill, discuss how easy it is to overspend with a credit card and point out how much interest you would be charged if you didn’t pay off the balance.
Pull your credit reports. If you go to AnnualCreditReport.com, you can get free copies of your credit reports from the three major credit bureaus.
It is a good idea to review these reports regularly to make sure there are no errors and no accounts have been opened in your name without your knowledge. While you are at it, show them to your children and take the chance to discuss the loans you have taken out, when it makes sense to borrow and the importance of making loan payments on time to maintain a good credit score.
Visit the cash machine. Ranzetta has his daughter shield the keypad when he punches in his personal identification number. He uses that as a chance to discuss the importance of protecting personal information and avoiding identity theft.
Open a bank account. This summer, Ranzetta plans to open a checking account for his daughter. But first, he is going to prod her to review the account agreement, with a particular focus on whether she wants overdraft protection.
If she opts for the protection, she won’t have to worry about her debit-card purchases being denied—but she could get hit with a $35 fee every time she overdraws. “Kids are going to tune in a lot more when it’s real,” Ranzetta says.
Go grocery shopping. The supermarket offers a chance for all kinds of money conversations, including why items are priced at $3.99 rather than $4, how to use unit pricing to find the best deal and why sugary cereals are placed where children can easily see them.
It also is a great opportunity to discuss needs and wants. “In our culture, there’s a deliberate confusion of needs and wants,” Nusbaum says. “As parents, we need to help our kids figure out the difference.”
Explain the auto policy. When your teenagers get their driver’s licenses, you will need to add them to your auto insurance. You might show them the revised policy, discuss the big jump in premium that comes with adding a young driver and talk about the different parts of the policy, including deductibles and the importance of liability coverage in case you get sued.

Revisit the week’s highlights. “At dinner, have a conversation about what happened this week that you’re grateful for,” Nusbaum suggests. “Your kid says, ‘l love my dance class.’ And you can say, ‘How did those classes come about?’”

That can be a chance to talk about where the money came from, how much the family spends each month and how you set financial priorities based on what you think is important.

These frequent conversations can make parents uncomfortable, especially when it involves talking about their own finances. But if you don’t teach your children about money, they will be left to learn from others—and you might not like the result.

“Many parents don’t want to talk about money,” Nusbaum notes. “But if you don’t, you’re abdicating responsibility.”

Culled from money watch

Pension Management and Retirement-Odunze Reginald C

Image credited to Guardian.com

The origin of pension’s dates back to ancient time, the Holy Bible in the book of Numbers 8 vs. 25, stated “but at the age of fifty, they must retire from the regular service and work no longer” and according to King James version, it states” And from the age of fifty years  they shall ceased waiting upon the service thereof and shall serve no more”

Why then do people view retirement as a wreck, the reason is that they have not save enough to cater for retirement during old age. There is a strong connection between planning, enough pension pot and happy retirement.

And according to Robert Kiyosaki, in his book Rich dad, poor dad, he noted that “people work for two reasons, to save for retirement and to make lots of money” Continuing Kiyosaki noted that “an individual’s reality is the boundary between faith and self confidence, and a person’s financial reality will not clear until he or she go beyond the fears and doubts of his or her own self imposed limits. Those self imposed limits are what limits the retiree from enjoying a happy an successful retirement.

According to Donna Rosato in an article captioned “5 secrets to a happy retirement-“noted that “Busy retirees tend to be happier. But just how active do you have to be? Moss has put a number on it. He found that the happiest retirees engage in three to four activities regularly; the least happy, only one or two. “The happy retiree group had extraordinarily busy schedules,” he says. “I call it hobbies on steroids.”
Rosato (op cited) noted that “For the biggest boost to your happiness, pick a hobby that’s social. The top pursuits of the happiest retirees include volunteering, travel, and golf; for the unhappiest, they’re reading, hunting, fishing, and writing. “The happiest people don’t do things in isolation,” says Moss. That’s no surprise when you consider that people 65 and older get far more enjoyment out of socializing than younger people do.”

So what should do during old age as it regards investment and business as majority of the retirees are interested in working and making more money, thereby creating wealth.  And according to Walter Updegrave in an article captioned “ Three Little mistakes that can sink your retirement,  which appeared in Yahoo Finance it states that “It’s almost become a cliché. Virtually every survey asking pre-retirees what they plan to do in retirement shows that the overwhelming majority plan to work.

 Indeed, a recent Merrill Lynch survey found that nearly three out of four people over 50 said their ideal retirement would include working. Which is fine. Staying connected to the work world in some way can not only offer financial benefits, it can also keep retirees more active and socially engaged

US: Stocks end lower as Greece keeps traders cautious

PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

[NEW YORK] US stocks eased from the week's highs on Friday as traders became cautious ahead of a fraught-filled weekend for Greece and the eurozone.
Giving up more than half of Thursday's gains, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 101.56 points (0.56 per cent) at 18,014.28, and the broad-based S&P 500 fell 11.48 (0.54 per cent) to 2,109.76.
After sweeping to a new record Thursday, the Nasdaq Composite Index shed 15.95 points (0.31 per cent) at 5,117.00.
The mild sell-off came as Greece and its official creditors entered the weekend with no deal on more financial aid to Athens in sight, and the cash-short country facing a June 30 deadline to repay 1.5 billion euros (US$1.7 billion) to the International Monetary Fund.

"Greece is obviously on everyone's mind; it could be just positioning ahead of that potential for volatility on Monday," said Charlie Bilello of Pension Partners. "Why take the risk over the weekend if you don't have to?" ConAgra Foods jumped 10.9 per cent as hedge fund Jana Partners reported amassing a 7.2 per cent stake and moved for three board seats in an effort to change management direction and boost the company's value, complaining of poor performance in the wake of the 2013 US$6.7 billion purchase of RalCorp.
Also in play was home lifestyle and furnishing group Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which added another 8.4 per cent on top of Thursday's surge on news that retail fashion brands investor Sequential Brands Group was nearing agreement to buy the iconic firm.
Among other movers, American Airlines rose almost 4.0 per cent, while chocolate maker Hersey melted off 3.5 per cent on a lowered sales forecast, and oil services power Schlumberger dropped 2.3 per cent.
Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury slid to 2.27 per cent from 2.34 per cent Thursday, while the 30-year fell to 3.05 per cent from 3.13 percent.
Bond prices and yields move inversely.

Culled from AFP in Business Times