I’m sure many of you were left wondering why I stopped writing back in July last year. Well, the simple truth is that I found these letters too difficult to write. I set the bar impossibly high: I wanted to share a new, amazing idea with you each time.

And as I thought more about reviving this letter, I also realized that there aren't that many amazing ideas to share when it comes to kids and money. The most important thing is to just give them age-appropriate, practical experience with it - the rest is detail.

So this time round, I’ll just casually share my thoughts and my own family's experiences on a weekly basis. I hope to be a source of inspiration and ideas for you. And if you're struggling to get started, these letters will serve as gentle encouragement to keep going until you’ve built the habit.
 

Recently in my family's Bomad:

My mom sent Andrew some money for his birthday and Easter. She lives in South Africa, so rather than sending an international transfer (which is very expensive and complicated), she just sent the money to my South African bank account. 

When it arrived, I created a new, virtual account in Andrew’s Bomad and added it there. Bomad handled the currency conversion automatically.

I prefer creating separate accounts like this when my kids receive money. It pushes them to explicitly decide what to do with it. If I’d just added the amount to Andrew's spend or save account, then I’d be making that decision for him. 

Even better, you could come to an agreement with your child that a certain percentage must be transferred to a savings account before the rest is moved to the spending account and the newly-created account is closed. 

Now I must admit that Andrew actually transferred the full amount to his spending account. When I got the Bomad notification about this, I suggested to him that instead he should save or invest some of it, but he assured me that he had his finances under control.

He already has significant savings and investments, and he’s just turned 16. I feel reasonably satisfied about the way he handles money, so I left it at that. 

While writing this letter, I decided to have a look at my daughter Michelle's Bomad. This is the account I put her Christmas gift money into:

She has been slowly nibbling away at at, and hasn't made a proper decision about what to do with it. Not great. It seems we need to get a little more disciplined ourselves. Good thing I restarted this newsletter then 😉