Our first Family Financial Meeting

[Anonymous]

Last week we got or first Family Financial Meeting. I was a little nervous, because we never did that. We have kids 5-10 years old. We want to give them a good start. I got the ides from Dave Ramsey: the financial peace planner. While there was just a comple of paragraph about it. I took what was there. I did some modifications to it. Here how it look like. I hope it give you ideas to plan such meeting in your family. It's better to discuss about it than to be surprised with problems. I plan to do it once a month. It took a quick 30 min. 

• How often: 1/month (peu être au début).
• Who, everyone above 5 years old.
• Have a notebook to take notes.

Discussions point (just ideas)

• Everyone saving goals (even kids).
• Distribution of envelopes: save, spend, give.
• Ideas on cutting back on spending.
• Remind everybody to turn off light and water.
• What taks to focus on. Everybody acording to their streght.
• Listen to a Dave Ramsey CD.
• Openness and honesty.
• Feel free to ask question and admit mistakes.

Prqparation

(Q=Quicken) Report and graph.

• Pint or have on scree (Q. Planning, Budget)
• Wheel (Q, spending tab)
• The flow (Q. report, Banking Cash Flow - last month)
• Show only category
• Any Credit alert

Routine

1. Start with a prayer
2. Why we do a family financial meeting.
1. To avoid financial problems and bad discussions.
2. It's important to know where we are
3. What we did.
4. It's important to know where the money goes. It's call cash flow: inflow + outflow.
5. Plan for future. Even for things we did not plan for (such as saving).
6. Live more secured and more at peace. Because money problems bring a lot of stress and sadness.
7. Develop good habits for kids in future. Because they will have to deal with money and debt too.
8. We do it together so we can grow wealthy or poor together, at least it won't or should not be a surprise.
9. The idea is not to get rich, it's to manage our money. (MOD CUT: TOS prohibits Discussions including race, nationality, sex, religion, politics. -Jag73 MOD)
10. It is better to desire to be poor than desire to be rich. (MOD CUT)

1. Review family budget
1. How we did.
2. What we can do better?
3. What can we change?
4. How much our life cost each month?

1. Debt
1. How much debt we have
2. How we are doing
3. What is debt snowball

1. What are the 5 baby steps of Daves Ramsey.
2. Where we are in the baby steps.

1. Saving goal
1. Short.
2. Long.
2. Credit score.
1. Why it's important to have a great credit score.
2. How we are doing.
3. What we can do next to fix it.

1. Family project
2. Final question/complain.
3. What we could do better next time. 
   • We did not listen to any Ramsey cd, maybe we will next month.
   • We need to find a note book to keep track of our meetings.
4. Closing prayer.

Thanks

[sxa001]

I think it is great to have the kids start to understand savings at such a young age.  I can also see some advantages to the kids knowing the realities of the family situation.  As they get older it will become more relatable and hopefully they grow to being responsible with money.  

My wife and I do our own version of "meetings" twice a month when we work on the bills, review our accounts.  Less formal for sure but it works for us.  

Good luck with your goals, Ramsey is a little too on the conservative side of budgeting for me but I have listened to his show and certain aspects I agree with.  He is a little dated on certain ideas, IMHO.  

[Save-n-Invest]

Including the kids in family finances is a good idea. They learn best at home hopefully. 

[Trudy]

Family financial meeting, great idea.  We can't count on the education system.