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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Blue 
 
 
Question: 
 
How do we best teach our children about money? 
 
Answer: 
 
RON BLUE: You know, I think there are some principles that you can 
understand and apply that go to the question, “How do you teach your 
children to manage money?” 
 
I think one of the principles is that they’ve got to experience what is 
being taught. In other words, you can tell them something, but until 
they experience it, they haven’t really learned it.  
 
I think in the envelope system that we used, they experienced making 
good decisions, and they experienced making bad decisions, and that’s 
how you learn. 
 
You know, I’m amazed at parents who don’t understand the fact that 
most of the wisdom they have comes from the mistakes they’ve made. 
We don’t want our kids to have those mistakes—or to make those 
mistakes, or to have those consequences—but they’ve got to 
experience what is being taught, and secondly, they’ve got to have an 
opportunity to fail. 
 
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a lot of areas where the kids 
failed, but I know they failed in probably making some decisions that 
they wish they hadn’t made. 
 
JUDY BLUE: Well, and I think the use of money, the envelope system, 
is such a great place for them to fail, because, you know, you give 
 
them X number of dollars in their spending money. It’s supposed to 
last them a whole month, and at the end of two weeks, it’s gone, and 
any other choices they want to make around their spending, they just 
have to wait, because it’s not there. 
 
And on more than one occasion, our children had a huge spending 
failure. It’s a whole lot better that your child has a $25 spending error 
than they have a $25,000 spending error. But if they don’t ever get to 
do that and bear the consequences of that—one of the things that Ron 
used to do on a regular basis when our kids were little was to give 
them a list at Christmas time, and they could pick either a trip with 
him, because he traveled a lot, or a ball game, or there were a lot of 
things. One of the choices always was some amount of time with him 
and some amount of dollars. So, you know, four hours and X number 
of dollars.  
 
And so, at that point, I think Karen was nine, and she chose her four 
hours at the mall and I think it was $25. And the first place they 
walked into at the mall was a Hello Kitty store. I don’t know how many 
people have been into a Hello Kitty store, but you could spend a lot of 
money on nothing in no time. 
 
RON: [laughs] 
 
JUDY: So, she did that. Fifteen minute later, she was done, and Ron 
didn’t know what to do with her for the other three hours and forty-
five minutes. She came home with a bag of pencils and erasers — and 
heaven knows what else — and momentarily, she was really excited 
about it. But the next morning, she came in to me, and she said, “I 
think I made a really big mistake. I wish I hadn’t spent all my money 
on that.” 
 
We laugh about it now, but it’s such a great way for kids to experience 
what you’re teaching them, and to have an opportunity to fail. 
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In every opportunity to succeed, there’s also the opportunity to fail— 
and we all want our kids to succeed, so you have to empower them 
with those opportunities that are small enough that you can help catch 
them, and make their fall a teaching thing that’s not so harsh. 
 
RON: I think that leads us to the third training principle, and that is 
they’ve got to have feedback.  
 
Before you [Judy] even said it, I knew what you were going to use as 
an illustration, because I remembered it so well. And I remembered 
when I counseled Karen, I said, “You know, we’ve got 4 hours. What 
are you going to do?”  
 
And she said, “Oh, this is what I want. This is my heart’s desire. I’ll be 
happy forever with this.” 
 
We sat in a mall for three and a half hours—in fact, I don’t think we 
lasted the three and a half hours. The next day, or on Monday, when 
you gave her the feedback, it was a tremendous teaching/counseling 
opportunity with her. I think she still remembers that also. 
 
I think a fourth principle is having rewards. You know, our Father in 
Heaven talks a lot about rewards and He gives us stuff, whether or not 
we deserve it.  
 
I think it’s important to give your children a reward sometimes, which 
is the unexpected—e never ever paid our kids for grades, for example. 
We never ever paid them for doing their chores around the house. We 
believed that, whatever grades they wanted to make, that was their 
decision and their responsibility. It wasn’t a reflection on us. It was 
their choice, and we communicated that very early on. 
 
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And we communicated very early on that, just as being a member of 
the family, they had jobs, they had responsibilities. So, they didn’t get 
paid for washing the dishes or making their bed or cleaning up their 
room. That was just, “You had to do that, as a part of the family.” 
 
Do you remember, in terms of reward, something that Bruce Wilkinson 
taught us, that the fear of the loss of a reward is a greater motivator 
than the promise of a reward? 
 
JUDY: Yes. And we had a lot of fun with that one, because what that 
means is that you go buy a roll of quarters, or whatever denomination 
you want to use, and you get mason jars—so we had five mason jars, 
or three mason jars, for whoever was on the system, and then you 
have a thirty-day time period, and you put the quarters in the jar. So, 
you know, this was Karen’s jar, this was Tim’s jar, this was Cynthia’s, 
Denise’s, and Michael’s. All five of them had their quarter jar. 
 
And this particular situation that involved all five kids was they kept 
bickering at the table. 
 
RON: Which is unusual, by the way. 
 
JUDY: I know, most kids probably don’t do that. [laughs] 
 
RON: Right. [laughs] 
 
JUDY: Anyway, we got tired of them bickering at the table, so we put 
their quarter jars in the kitchen. It was all theirs. In thirty days, they 
could have it, if they didn’t bicker at the table. Every time they 
bickered, they had to get up, take one of the quarters out, and give it 
to us. It didn’t take them very long to figure out that I really would like 
to have the $20 of quarters in jar. So, it was extremely effective.  
 
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The most effective one, my really most fun one was, we moved to 
Atlanta, and we became Braves fans, and all baseball players spit. A 
lot. And so, our two boys learned to spit—they’d spit every time they 
walked outside, they’d spit every time they got out of the car. We tried 
everything—threatening, cajoling—I don’t know what. Finally, I said, 
“OK. We’re going on the quarter jar.” Neither one of them lost more 
than 50 cents, and they quit spitting. To this day, they don’t spit. 
[laughs] 
 
RON: That’s exactly right. The fear of the loss of the reward was a 
greater motivator than the promise if you don’t spit—whatever.  
 
That quarter jar was one of the most significant teaching tools we had. 
In fact, it was so good, I remember Karen, one time when she was a 
teenager, she came up to me and she said—she hadn’t been on 
discipline of any kind for quite some time—and she said, “Daddy, don’t 
I need some discipline someplace?” so she could have her quarter jar. 
[laughs] 
 
So, here are just some principles. You know, they’ve got to experience 
what is being taught. They’ve got to have an opportunity to fail, 
they’ve got to have feedback—and, don’t forget, rewards. Our 
Heavenly Father gives us rewards also.  
 
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