MyBrilliantKidz

 This is the second lesson in the Smart Consumer Skills Guide for Brilliant Kids series. In the last lesson we talked about a businesses job is to make money from you.

Business is not there to help and assist with daily life – that is your job – they merely provide you the products, tools and knowledge to do that. Because they want profit, this can work in your favour. So how can you use this to your advantage?

You can do this by comparing the offers by different companies for the same product or service. Make them truly compete against each other – play them off against each other, and see which is more motivated to make the sale, and in the process give you a saving. A business that is motivated to make the sale is also more likely to provide a better customer or after sales service.

If they are switched on enough to make an effort to get your custom, then they are going to try to keep it, as they will realise that the value of a loyal customer is far greater. A good impression increases the chances of future sales – “better the devil you know, than the one you don’t”.

So what are the strategies can you use to help you do this?

Online

• Google or Yahoo search – compare 2 or 3 sites and you will get a good feel for the price
• Price comparison sites – always a good place to start from. I would try a couple to get a good indication. Whilst they are good, you can still get products cheaper outside, as these sites rely on online retailers – if a business is offline, it won’t appear in their search results. And not all online retailers will appear on these sites either – only those who run affiliate programs – that is, they are willing to pay the comparison site a commission for each click or sale. This is how these sites are funded and make money.
• Ebay – you can get a whole load of items cheap here, but look make sure you check the sellers statistics – how long have they been on Ebay, how many items have they sold, what feedback have they had, what payment methods are they using – stick to paypal, as any other method requires you part with your money upfront, do they give any guarantees or do they have a returns policy. Many powersellers are effectively retailers who use the Ebay model.
• Amazon – Amazon now offer other retailers to promote their produces on the Amazon site. 

Offline

• Check the local papers for who has offers and sales – show these to other retailers to see if they will at least match the discounted price.
• Word of mouth – who do your friends and relatives recommend and why. Do they know the business owner sufficiently well to get you a discount.
• Shop at the end of the day. The end of day strategy is really good for perishables and foodstuffs – especially at market stalls where they will sell at a large discount, rather than throw away the fruit or vegetables. At supermarkets, look out for marked down items which have reached their “best by” or “display until” date. These items are still good to eat, and have not spoiled. These dates are telling us that the item will retain it’s best and freshest quality until the date displayed. The difference in quality is very small and not noticeable. The nutritional value does also is affected similarly. The price might be up to 80% less, for a small 5% drop in quality.
• Shop at end of season if the item is seasonal or coming to the end of the product range’s life. This strategy works really well, provided you are not going to need to keep going back for more items, and you can pick some superb quality products at deeply discounted prices. For Example, retailers will stock up for the winter 3 – 4 beforehand, and will clear their summer ranges during August and September – a good time for bargain hunting. The winter stock is usually sold off in January.

Apply these strategies, talk about them, teach your kids, and get them involved in this process as a fun exciting exercise and they will pick up these smart habits.

In our next lesson, we will talk about the tricks and strategies companies and retailers use to persuade you to buy from them.

www.MyBrilliantKidz.com

Teaching kids about money at an early age is the smart thing to do. They will grow up already familiar with how money works and be smart with money. Usually they are far more interested in the real world – games, videos, toys, play…

The real challenge is to make your children so savvy with money that they actually end up saving money for you as parents. In the last article we talked about companies spending billions to make you buy from them, because this makes them a lot more money. You just need to be able to control this. In order to do that, there are some questions you need to be asking, and some rules that you need to live by – and teach your kids. We have created this Consumer skills guide as a set of lessons that summarizes what you need to know and teach your kids.

You will need to understand how money works – what is an asset, what is debt, and then to develop the skills and strategies to use this knowledge. It is surprising to find that many adults, let alone kids do not understand money – yet they spend their whole adult life running after it. Because they do not understand, they end up being a ‘slave’ to money – it runs their lives.

In the developed world, we live in a capitalist system or economy, where companies and businesses are run to make a profit, by providing a service or products to customers – us the consumers. That is their primary and main purpose. They may provide a great service or product along the way, but that this part of making money. A better product or service can attract more custom and generate higher profits. The capitalist system is the most powerful economic system known to man; it has generated massive wealth, security, comfort, employment, power and has afforded a high standard of living for us.

However, until you understand that a company’s job is to make money by persuading you to buy – you will make the wrong decisions. You are the only person who is really bothered about you and your family. If you don’t learn this lesson, the companies will be left with smiles on their faces… while you’ll be left with a future of cold baked beans at mealtimes because it could be all you can afford.

In the next lesson we will talk about how to use this to your advantage.

www.MyBrilliantKidz.com

At MyBrilliantKidz, we believe that all our children are Brilliant Kids in the making – it is up to us parents to bring this out. Whilst we may think about this as primarily being linked with education, we should not forget the “real world” skills and attributes that are needed to get the best out of adulthood.

Unfortunately these are not taught at schools, leaving our kids to pick them up in later life or at best copy our habits. We are all swayed by the powerful media and advertising companies to buy and behave in particular ways.

Very few parents take the time to ‘educate’ their children in these skills. Not only can kids be smart and savvy in developing those important financial skills, they also lay the foundation stones for taking the first steps to entrepreneurial mindset.

Your body is made of 2 halves – the head and the rest of your body. The rest of your body has the ability to earn in the $20 – $100 per hour region. Your head or mind has the ability to earn $ millions. To awaken this potential, an entrepreneurial mindset is required. The younger a child starts the easier and more natural this becomes.

There are a number of tools and games that will help do this, which we will talk about in later articles. The first set of articles in this series will talk about how to become a financially aware consumer.

Companies spend over $300 billion a year on marketing, advertising and teaching their staff to sell! Why such a high figure? The answer is that we as consumers, spend over $7 Trillion a year!

The result is that everywhere we are bombarded and tempted to buy spend our hard earned cash. From the billboards, TV to the supermarket, we constantly encounter many imaginative and varied ways and techniques to get us to spend.

Companies also spend millions to train their staff to buy when they are buying for the company as procurement officers. Yet as consumers – we are the buyers who do not get any “buyers’ training”. Yes there are consumers groups, but these are small and cannot compete with the big budgets of the multi-nationals.

That’s why we at MyBrilliantKidz have started this practical survival guide to living in the most competitive consumer economies in the world.

www.MyBrilliantKidz.com

After the Test

You and your child can learn a great deal from reviewing a graded exam paper. Reviewing will show him or her where they had difficulty and after some analysis, why. This is especially important for classes in which the material builds from one section to the next, as in math. Students who have not mastered the basics of math are not likely to be able to work with fractions, square roots, beginning algebra and so on.

Discuss the wrong answers with your child and find out why they chose the answers – i.e. what their thought process was. This will help to relate back to the question – did they understand the question? or misread a question? If they understood the question and knew the answer, did they fail to make the answer clear?

You and your child should read and discuss all comments that the teacher writes on a returned test. If any comments aren’t clear, tell your child to ask the teacher to explain them.

Reviewing the test paper is also has another benefit – it reinforces the understanding that the test was not difficult. It is important to nurture this thought process in your kids, and to link this to the revision and work they did before the test. By doing this, you are reinforcing the following thought processes:

• test or exam preparation is not difficult
• the best way is to revise the work as you are doing it
• a little discipline now goes a long long way to preparation for tests and exams
• doing the exam or test is not difficult, as long as you follow a strategy or a system
  Remember, you are looking for small wins – where you see this, make you comment and praise them on it.

Finally, don’t get upset because of a single test score. Many things can influence how your child does on a test. She might not have felt well on test day or she might have been too nervous to concentrate. She might have had an argument with a friend before the test or she might have been late to school because of traffic. Remember, one test is simply one test. This needs to be balanced with the child’s overall well being – this may require some trial and error.

Lastly, enjoy the experience, and have faith that it will work out. It does not require a major change in your lifestyle, but this can reap major rewards in the long run.

www.MyBrilliantKidz.com

Continuing this series of practical articles to help you and your children – Helping your Child Succeed in School, and test taking, in this article we discuss how we can work with our children in helping them prepare for exams, and getting through school.

Kids are intelligent enough to understand comprehend the world around them. They will also be willing to do something if they understand why, although this might need to be reinforced by some ‘rewards’. Here are some tips to consider.

Talk to your child about testing. It’s helpful for children to understand why schools give tests and to know the different kinds of tests they will take. Explain what tests are and how the process works.

Discuss with your child that occasionally, he or she will take “standardized” tests. Explain that these tests use the same standards to measure student performance across the state or even across the country. Every student takes the same test according to the same rules.

Don’t place so much emphasis on your child’s test scores that you lose sight of their well being. Too much pressure can affect the test performance – you do not want your child to think that you will only love them if they do well on tests.

Encourage your child. Praise him or her for the things that she does well. If your child feels good about herself, she will do her best on a test. Children who are afraid of failing are more likely to become anxious when taking tests and more likely to make mistakes.

Do try plan ahead and introduce a small amount of revision everyday, even if it is only 15 minutes.

Avoid test anxiety. It’s good for your child to be concerned about taking a test. It’s not good for them to develop “test anxiety.” Test anxiety is worrying too much about doing well on a test. It can mean disaster for your child. Students with test anxiety can worry about success in school and about their future success. They can become very self-critical and lose confidence in their abilities. Instead of feeling challenged by the prospect of success, they become afraid of failure. If your child worries too much about taking tests, you can help to reduce the anxiety by encouraging the child to do the following things. This has the opposite effect to what you need to achieve.

Make sure there is plenty of time to do other activities that allows your child to feel relaxed and content. A content child is likely to do better in the tests.

Get away from “cramming” the night before. This will likely increase your anxiety, which will interfere with clear thinking. Get a good night’s sleep. A light flick through the notes is better.

Go through the test mechanics – how to do the test:

• When you get the test, read the directions carefully before you begin work. If you don’t understand how to do something, ask the teacher to explain.
• Look quickly at the entire text to see what types of questions are on it (multiple choice, matching, true/false, essay).
• See if different questions are worth different numbers of points. This will help you to determine how much time to spend on each part of the test.
• Do the easiest questions first
• Do not spend too long on a question, move on to the next question if you cannot answer or your mind goes blank. Do not spend time worrying about it. Come back to the unfinished questions at the end.

These tips will help get the best out of both you as the parent and your children. In the next article, we will talk about what happens after the exam.

www.MyBrilliantKidz.com