As many of you know, the Gifting Sense project has long championed teaching kids the powerful habit of thinking before buying. So try to imagine our sheer delight when a series of brief TED Talks entitled “Your Money And Your Mind,” narrated by and based upon the work of behavioral scientist Dr. Wendy De La Rosa, was brought to our attention. (You can watch all of them in about 30 minutes.)
Dr. De La Rosa doesn’t believe we can teach financial insecurity away. Her research concludes that people need to be able to change their environments to consistently make decisions that support what they already know about money: that you can’t spend more than you earn. Changing a child’s spending environment is exactly what we do when we ask them to calculate the DIMS for a possible purchase before it is made.
Calculating the DIMS SCORE® is the “speed bump” young consumers need in today’s digital world—to drive their personal finance vehicles safely—and slow down the speed at which consumer decisions are made. They help young people experience thinking before buying in a concrete but engaging way versus a “school of hard knocks” (SHK); the latter can also be effective but typically involves a serious bout of buyer’s remorse. We believe we can give children money, comfort, and skills without a visit to the SHK!
There is so much good information in her mini-talks; we really hope you’ll make the mini-investment of time required to watch them. One suggestion we really like is the “frequency budget” for people who are looking to cut down on take-away meals because counting the number of times you eat out each week is a lot easier than managing the dollar amount spent on each meal. It’s much easier to calculate and understand you only have one or two meals left in your takeaway allowance for the week, then say, $37.00.
The series finale discusses the benefit of using a vacation day to manage personal finance tasks (like paying off debt with each paycheck instead of monthly or redesigning your online environment to avoid being constantly invited to spend). Dr. De La Rosa compares this “financial health day” to a day at a spa because you can feel good at the end of it. She even encourages employers to provide time in the benefits calendar for such a day.
Consider having the conversations about money we all need to have with our spouses, friends, and children to normalize scarcity and saving, according to Dr. De La Rosa, our new favorite lifestyle physician. We don’t know exactly how Wendy will feel about our description of her as such (a “lifestyle physician”), but it is certainly meant to be highly praised. The relationship between personal financial health and an individual’s overall well-being is understood now more than ever. So, anyone who helps others reduce financial stress operates within some branch of the wellness world, and lifestyle preferences drive more spending decisions than most of us want to admit.
On International Women’s Day, we salute Dr. De La Rosa and the reader who texted us the link to her work! They immediately understood the connection between Dr. De La Rosa’s research, our workshops, and our bold but achievable dream: that one day soon, young adults everywhere will be thanking their parents for having taught them about money rather than vocally wishing out loud on various social media platforms that those lessons had taken place. To learn how, click on the pink or blue buttons below.
Child Development DIMS SCORE® Questions Financial Literacy For Parents For Teachers Inspiring Financial Writers
