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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Blue 
 
 
Question: 
 
What principles should we teach our children about money and money 
management? 
 
Answer: 
 
RON BLUE: I think it’s really important that you start this whole 
teaching/training process with understanding what it is you’re trying to 
teach them, so that you know what you’re doing has a purpose, and 
then you can measure how well you’re doing. 
 
There are at least five things that Judy and I tried to do when it came 
to teaching our children. There were five things that we were 
purposefully looking at and attempting to do. 
 
The first one was wisdom. And we wanted our children to make good 
decisions, and the Book of Proverbs has a lot of wisdom in it. The Book 
of Ecclesiastes has wisdom in it. But, in the New Testament, it says, 
“The wisdom that’s from above is, first all, pure, peaceable, gentle, 
willing to yield, and is full of good fruits.” (James 3:13-18)  
 
So, we’re going to be looking at our children and saying, “Are they 
developing wisdom?” And wisdom is way beyond intelligence and skill. 
Wisdom is making the right decisions for the right reasons.  
 
I think, secondly, what we wanted to teach them was, they probably 
wanted to get married at some point, and so is there unity? Could we 
teach them by example, for example, how you and I approach 
decision-making? We didn’t always agree in certain areas. I can’t think 
of any we didn’t agree on, but there probably were a couple.  
 
 
 
JUDY BLUE: [laughs] 
 
RON: We wanted to model for them the fact that decision-making 
required both of us being able to give on a certain point, and having 
unity in our decision-making. 
 
I think, thirdly, we very purposely wanted to teach them about 
financial goals and objectives. Remember how we did that, in terms of 
the goals that we helped them set? 
 
JUDY: On their birthdays? 
 
RON: Yeah. Uh-huh. 
 
JUDY: On their birthdays, we would take them out for their birthday 
dinner with just us and one of our children—and given the fact that we 
had five children, that was an extra-special opportunity. We had a 
goals notebook that we take with us every year that was for each 
child, and we’d set their goals, and it included their friends, their 
grades, their activities, and their financial goals.  
 
The financial goals were the most fun to do with them, because we 
also have always used the envelope system with the children, which 
worked very, very well. But we would sit down with them on a regular 
basis at this meeting or at another time when we’d get together with 
just them, and talk about what their budgetary needs were relative to 
last year.  We helped them to help us come to the right conclusion 
about how their resources needed to be different this year—whether 
their clothes were going to be more expensive, or if they were going to 
need a different kind of clothes, or if they’d been through a growth 
spurt, or the activities that they were going to be involved in were 
going to be more expensive. So there was a dialog and they learned to 
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process and be part of that process, as well as part of the end result of 
the decision. 
 
RON: You know, I think you said something that’s really critical is we 
wanted them to help us help them.  
 
JUDY: Right. 
 
RON: So, it wasn’t about us telling them what the spending plan was. 
It was a conscientious objective to sit down and discuss with them. 
And we revised it as their needs changed, as I remember.  
 
I think that was really a fourth thing that we set as an objective, and 
that is there is freedom that comes with a spending plan. Some people 
call that a budget. 
 
JUDY: Well, and I think it’s also important to understand that just 
because we had the conversation with them, and they thought they 
needed more than we thought they needed, that didn’t mean that’s 
what they got.  
 
Both of you (Ron and child) processed one of the principles that we 
applied. And I—particularly as a mother, since I had a lot more 
interaction with the children on a regular basis than Ron did—was 
always trying to get on the same side of an issue with the child, as 
opposed to being on the opposite of the issue. Because if you’re on the 
opposite side of an issue, you’re doing a tug-of-war thing.  
 
If you just think about what it’s like when there’s a tug-of-war, if 
you’re pulling on one end and I’m pulling on the other end, and 
somebody lets go, somebody’s going to lose, eventually, unless you 
just both drop the rope and have a truce.  
 
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So, if you look at an issue from the same side—whether it’s finances, 
or making wise choices, or who your friends are, or whatever it is—
then your child feels like you’re with them in this decision. So, they’re 
helping you help them. 
 
RON: You know something comes to mind as you talk about that and 
that is, money is a door. We’re really talking about child-raising 
principles, but money is the door that allowed us to teach certain 
principles and character qualities. And we understood that, I think, 
money was just a tool in this particular case. It was never the end. 
And, so, we used money to teach our children character qualities and 
things.  
 
And I think one of the other things that we intentionally wanted to 
teach them was the fifth thing, and that was, “How do you resolve 
conflict?” And, you know, that’s a battle that everybody has, but if you 
can help your child understand that conflict exists anytime there’s two 
people you’re going to have some conflict. The real issue is conflict 
resolution. How do you go about that? 
 
So, these are kind of five things that we wanted to teach our children: 
teach them wisdom; we wanted to teach them unity; we wanted to 
teach them the freedom of a spending plan; we wanted teach them 
how to set goals and objectives; and we wanted to teach them 
conflict-resolution—and it all came through the money door. It was 
never about the money. It was about the things that the money 
represented. Money was just the tool that we used to teach them the 
real issues of life. 
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