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How to Teach Your Kids About Money

How much should my children contribute to savings for college?

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Janet Bodnar
Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine
www.kiplinger.com  

Janet Bodnar is deputy editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, for which she has written articles on a wide range of topics, including investing, money management and the economy.

Bodnar is a nationally recognized expert in the field of children's and family finances. Her latest book is Money Smart Women: Everything You Need to Know to Achieve a Lifetime of Financial Security (Kaplan). She speaks frequently on the subject of women and money.

Bodnar's "Money-Smart Kids" column appears regularly in Kiplinger's magazine and at <a>www.kiplinger.com/columns/kids</a>. It was chosen by Moneysmartz.com as one of the top financial columns online. Bodnar is also the kids and money coach on the AOL Coaches site.

Her book Raising Money Smart Kids (Kaplan Publishing) was a finalist in the personal finance category of the Books for a Better Life awards, honoring the best self-improvement books of 2005. It was also a selection of the Washington Post's Color of Money book club.

Bodnar has appeared on Oprah, Today, Good Morning America, The Early Show on CBS, Fox, CNN and PBS. She has done hundreds of radio and TV interviews and appears regularly on WUSA, the CBS-TV affiliate in Washington, D.C., and WTOP, the major all-news radio station in Washington. She is a popular speaker and has been quoted in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor to Parents and Glamour.

Bodnar has been recognized by American University for excellence in personal finance reporting, and by the National Council on Family Relations for her televised reports on children and money. The audio version of her book (read by the author) received three "best of" awards, from Publishers Weekly (business category), Library Journal (nonfiction) and the Audio Publishers Association (educational category).

Prior to joining Kiplinger's, Bodnar worked for The Providence Journal and The Washington Post. She received her master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she was also a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism.

Married, she is the mother of three children.

How much should my children contribute to savings for college?

In this video, Deputy Editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance and author Janet Bodnar answers questions on the many issues surrounding what kids should know about money.

This series: 35,481 views

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Host: How much should my children contribute to saving for college?

Janet Bodnar: I think it is really important for children to contribute to their own college education. Certainly, it will take some of the financial pressure off you and they will also appreciate it more if they have skin in the game. One of my regular correspondences to my money smart kids column is always saying it is very important for kids to have skin in the game and this is certainly important when it comes to college. I think the decision, the whole college decision needs to be a family decision to begin with and you need to do it before the kids start applying because they will just assume that they can apply to any school they want to and you are going to pay for it. Now, if that is not the case and it should not be the case, even if you can afford it, they should be contributing some of this. You got to sit down and say, "Look, this is what we can afford. You can go to any, let us say, in-state public institution that you want, but if you want to go to a private school or if you want to go to out of state, you are going to have to contribute to that because we can afford, we can swing the in-school public education but we cannot do the out of state school. That is going to be more expensive.

" So, this is what you are going to have to do. So, it maybe that the kids have to take on student loans or it maybe that it has to come out of their own savings or out of their own earnings. I think at the very least, kids should be paying for their own miscellaneous expenses while they are away at college. So, they should be having a summer job so that all the beer and pizza money that they need when they go back to school comes from them and not from you and I think that is really at a minimum. I think that nowadays, of course, a lot of students spend even more as far as student loans are concerned or they have work study programs or again, they work while they are going to school. In anything like that I think it is really important because again, it alleviates some of the pressure on you and it makes the kids appreciate more the money that you and they are spending on his education.

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