Thanksgiving is a very special time of year in my home. We gather with family and friends and enjoy a meal together as we give thanks for our many blessings. I also don’t believe gratitude is a one-day yearly event. In our family, we call ourselves, “Lucky Duckies” because I want my girls to be grateful for all the wonderful things in their lives.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, and confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” – Melody Beattie
This is one my favorite quotes on gratitude. One that I share with clients and my girls to remind them about the power of gratitude. One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is to teach them how to be grateful every day. Too often we get caught up in the race to acquire more things and forget about how much we already have.
In our home, we teach our kids how to be grateful through our actions and words. After the girls help me unpack our groceries, I’ll stand with the refrigerator door open and say, “Aren’t we lucky duckies to have a full refrigerator?” Or when we dine out, I’ll casually mention, “We are so blessed to have this time together, and the money to go out to dinner”
So many children take these things for granted and don’t realize how lucky they are. If we learn to not feel entitled to these things, we find gratitude and joy in simple, every day pleasures, which is a very happy and fulfilling way to live your life. I wish for my children to live in gratitude and know the best way to teach them is to model it first.
This Thanksgiving, I am particularly grateful to every reader of The Heavy Purse blog, our ever-growing number of twitter followers and facebook fans. The chance to share my passion and knowledge to help you teach your children about money makes my heart so full. You are the reason I am doing this. Thank you for your support. I wish you a very blessed Thanksgiving.
The Heavy Purse Store is now open! My new downloadable Money Club Workbooks are now on sale. Each workbook provides five targeted lessons to help you grow Financially Confident Kids. Please check them out in The Heavy Purse Store.
SHANNON RYAN, CFP®
Making children money savvy is sooo important. We recently bought our son ( he is 11) a new 3D DSi with expectation that he would pay half of the cost out of money he had saved. We don't expect him to pay half of everything, just big ticket items that he really wants. Obviously we discuss before hand what Big ticket items. (No flat screen tv's or cell phone's) lol.