The Lemonade Stand Millionaire
“Lemonade for sale, fifty cents a glass!”
Do you remember your first sale? How about the pleasant jingle of change at the end of the day, or the lessons learned from picking a bad business location? The opportunities from such a simple and fun experience for your children can teach them a wealth of skills, including planning, goal setting, communication skills, money management, and more.
But what if this is just the start for your budding young entrepreneur? What if they want to continue earning their own money—continue to feel that sense of pride at doing something they love and being financially rewarded for it?
Though it may not look like it, today’s society is bursting with amazing opportunities available to your child. This book is designed to help parents guide their kids on the road to success in business and in life. Whether it’s a summer project or the beginnings of lifelong entrepreneurship, what your child can learn with this book will set the stage for a lifetime of success stories.
Just as important as the learning is the discovery that they have control over their income. Chapter 4 provides a simple money management system that is useful whether your child decides to start a business or not. Using money from birthdays, Christmas, or house chores, kids (and their parents) will learn how to set aside money for spending, saving, investing, and giving. Setting up habits now that keep them out of impulse buying will prevent them from ever getting on the paycheck-to-paycheck treadmill.
It’s up to us to show kids how to build wealth and be financially intelligent, because our schools are definitely not teaching them about it in the classroom.
I have seen firsthand the value of supporting a child’s dream. I have seen my two girls flourish, learning skills and lessons that will stay with them for a lifetime. They started learning about money management at ages 2 and 4 and started their own business when they were 7 and 9, and now, 7 years later, they are still growing that business.
Most of us were never taught in school about spending, saving, investing, and giving to charity. These subjects have always been left up to parents or employers, or else just left for kids to figure out on their own (usually through TV and other media). This gap in learning the ins and outs of financial matters is plaguing us as a society. As indebtedness (both individually and nationally) keeps growing, media such as commercials and movies glorify credit cards and “pay nothing for a year” purchases. Financial debt is the number one reason for stress. It is also the leading cause of suicide, and one of the biggest factors in divorce.
Debt creates a society of people who are enslaved by their jobs and unable to enjoy what we were put on earth to do: to connect, have fun, and create a better world. Many people work overtime or take on a second job and still struggle to make ends meet. Money management is one of the most important and, in truth, easiest things you can teach your children—and one that will have a massive impact on their financial well-being in their adult life. When we are all personally in better financial positions we are able to contribute to our world on a different level and improve the quality of our lives.
What could you do for your family, community, country, or world if you didn’t have to worry about money? People often fantasize about a perfect world where young children are brought up to learn concepts that will enable them to do great things for themselves and others. But what if we didn’t need a perfect world to create this way of being? What if we were to decide to start creating a world right now for ourselves and our children that would support them on a successful road ahead? Imagine the tremendous impact this could have on the world and on the issues that cause conflict from a global level right down to the personal level. If enough parents were to decide to teach their children the ways of financial success, we might even change the world as we know it!
So as your kids embark on this journey of wonder and fulfillment, feel free to take it with them—in fact, I recommend it. Kids are more likely to follow with you, their parents, as a role model. Seeing you display the same financial habits you are teaching them will only encourage them to adopt those habits as their own. Remember the adage “it’s not what you say but what you do.” So fill out your own charts, and dream about what you would truly love to do. Perhaps you, too, can start your own small business. Remember, what you focus on expands, so do the exercises with your kids, and enjoy the journey.
It is vitally important to teach kids early about money—spending it, saving it, investing it, and giving it. Now is the time to make this way for kids to look at money the new normal. I have also seen the pride they take in earning and managing their own money—learning a skill that I know is setting them up for life.