5 Reasons Families Use the DIMS SCORE® Calculator for BTS/ Holiday Shopping
Teaching Kids About Money is particularly popular when families are back-to-school shopping. With good reason: this and the winter holiday gift-giving season are the two times of the year that “in-family” supply and demand for typical childhood purchases line up. Most kids know their parents will be willing to help them get new shoes, clothes, backpacks, school supplies, or sports equipment at the beginning of the academic year. They’re also confident that looking forward to at least one winter holiday gift is OK.
What’s the best way to help kids appreciate the hard-earned dollars spent from August through September, November, and December? Encourage them to think before they (ask to) buy.
The DIMS – DOES IT MAKE SENSE?® SCORE Calculator is an easy and fun way to elevate thinking before buying from something kids do to “get what they want” to something that helps them want…items or experiences that make sense – for them and their families!
Here are the top 5 reasons parents and kids enjoy our thoughtful-spending-tool:
1) It’s free and safe. There is no registration or paywall. Parents feel good knowing Gifting Sense has no agenda other than to introduce young people to the powerful habit of asking and answering simple questions about typical childhood (tween or teen) purchases before anyone spends a dime!
2) It’s engaging. Parents don’t have to beg their children to use the DIMS SCORE® Calculator repeatedly. Kids are like everyone else; they enjoy tools “that work. ” And they quickly recognize that the DIMS SCORE® Calculator helps them work on a problem that matters to them in real-time: “Should I buy this item or experience?”
3) The DIMS SCORE® Calculator makes learning about money immediately helpful. It only takes minutes to answer the questions that can help a person avoid disappointment, reduce waste, improve family harmony, and protect the planet. As a result, kids tell us they find the experience immediately helpful and empowering. What young person doesn’t want to avoid #FOMO and buyer’s remorse?
(Please also note: thoughtful spenders are grateful receivers. When children understand precisely how much money they’re asking you to spend and how much they will likely use and appreciate an item or experience – it tends to increase gratitude for the purchases that do get made and decrease requests for the sorts of frivolous last-minute add-ons that can wreak havoc on a family’s budget.)
4) It helps families be more environmentally friendly. When we only buy what we’ll use and appreciate, we automatically reduce our carbon footprint (the amount of energy used to produce and deliver goods and services) and the number of underappreciated items we contribute to landfills in our lifetime. Kids are more environmentally aware than ever, and they tell us they enjoy letting their parents know how much thoughtful consumer choices can help address climate change.
5) Perhaps most importantly, the DIMS SCORE® Calculator allows kids to begin learning about money before high school. We don’t start any other subject “in the middle.” We learn the alphabet and then to read. We learn our numbers and then about math. Unfortunately, many students never receive personal finance lessons until high school or later, when their money personalities (the habits & beliefs they have about money) are already largely established, and full-semester courses can involve topics that don’t feel relevant to teenage life.
BTS and the winter holiday gift-giving season are the two times of the year that “in-family” supply and demand for typical childhood purchases line up. Most kids know their parents will be willing to help them get new shoes, clothes, backpacks, school supplies, or sports equipment at the beginning of the academic year. They’re also confident that looking forward to at least one winter holiday gift is OK.
The money habits and beliefs we develop in childhood are incredibly stable – so helping kids develop productive ones in the first place, doesn’t only help them in real-time, it has tremendous future value. There’s a huge ripple effect!
We want kids to enter high school knowing from first-hand experience that anyone can get and use (at first basic) financial information to improve their lives. That can’t help but encourage students to embrace high school personal finance courses, whose lessons will naturally be more sophisticated than making spending trade-offs. Because you get the most out of a course when you believe the subject being taught has operational reality in your life.
Think of thinking before buying as the A-B-Cs or 1-2-3s of personal finance. It’s an easy-to-teach life skill that helps kids develop comfort with basic personal finance terms and ideas (e.g., sales tax, cost-per-use). It lets them understand that financial jargon is only vocabulary without understanding. It lets them experience first-hand that money-smarts are worth pursuing, even when they’re far from being adult income earners.
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