Not Your Parents' Money Book: making, saving, and spending your own money

by Jean Chatzky, Erwin Haya (Illustrator)

For the first time, financial guru and TODAY Show regular Jean Chatzky brings her expertise to a young audience. Chatzky provides her unique, savvy perspective on money with advice and insight on managing finances, even on a small scale. This book will reach kids before bad spending habits can get out of control. With answers and ideas from real kids, this grounded approach to spending and saving will be a welcome change for kids who are inundated by a consumer driven culture. This book talks about money through the ages, how money is actually made and spent, and the best ways for tweens to earn and save money.

Genres: Finance, Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Amy]

Now, how do I get my teens to read this? Thinking I’ll set it on the floor by their bedsides and see what happens.

[Andreas]

I recently read "Not Your Parents' Money Book": Making, Saving, and Spending Your Money" by Jean Chatzky. After reading this book I learned a lot about economics in general. the author was trying to show the importance of learning how to manage your funds and your overall economic status at a young age. Chatzy is also trying to show how we CAN start to manage these things at a young age. The book overall summarizes different things such as how banks, savings accounts, and checks work. He also summarizes how we should manage our money such as by starting a savings account and embarking on (legal) jobs for people our age.This book was very interesting and has proven very useful. Chatzky mentioned how teenagers have trouble managing their funds overall because our spending and saving habits aren't correct.

I really enjoyed many things about this book. The author's writing was very easy to understand not only because it used elementary school level words but it also explained economical terms like "interest" or "inflation". By doing this there was no confusion as to what he was taking about throughout the whole book.Another thing I appreciated was that throughout the whole book he was answering real questions that real kids had specifically asked. Most of these questions were questions I was asking myself so it was interesting to see other young adults were asking the same things I was. Just like the rest of the book he was answering these questions in a very understandable manner. I really enjoyed this book but somethings I didn't enjoy was that most of the book was talking about the economy but that isn't quite smart. Not only because the book isn't mainly about the reason we read the book in the first place (How to get money) but also because it's not quite as interesting as the other topics he was talking about. I think this hurt the overall experience but other than that I really enjoyed the book

While reading "Not Your Parents' Money Book" I learned a lot about how to manage your money in general.
The main thing the author was talking about was the balance between spending and gaining. What it told me was to figure out how much you make in a certain interval and calculate how much you take out because of taxes and the things you such as water and food. Then based on the money you have you manage how much you can spend. Never spend more then you can afford or all of the money you have. For example if I make 40 dollars a week, and 20$ are taken out because of my necessities, then I cant buy a shirt that's 30 dollars nor can I buy one thats 20 dollars because i'd be left with no money. It was important lessons like these about money management throughout the whole book.

I definitely recommend this book anyone 13 and up. The reason the youngest age is 13 is just because 13/14 (depending on where you live) is the year you can legally work. Also based on my own experiences this age was the age where I started to worry about finances and worrying about my country's economy in general.

[Kimberly]

Great book that covers the basics of money management (from the economy to how to choose a charity to donate your money/time to) in a quick read. I created a test, and made it a requirement for my teen to get a student debit card. It introduced her to some new concepts, and because we have talked about it (oh yeah, and the test) she's got the basics down cold!

[Allison]

I'm going to use this book in my 8th Grade Financial Literacy class. It was a really good, quick read and is written at a level that is perfect for middle school age students. Whether you are a teacher or a parent I think this is a great book!

[Naomi]

I thought this book was too old with some of its topics for the targeted age of the book. I had to double check that I wasn't reading an adult book.