All parents want their children to grow up to make wise money decisions. On today’s edition of Family Talk, James Dobson welcomes financial experts Ron and Judy Blue to share their proven envelope system for raising money-smart kids. They explain how simple tools such as envelopes and clear boundaries can teach children biblical stewardship and wise spending habits. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/707/29
Hello, everyone. You’re listening to Family Talk, a radio broadcasting ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Dr. James Dobson, and thank you for joining us for this program.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Roger Marsh. You know, money habits start forming early in life, but oftentimes we parents miss crucial opportunities to teach our kids financial wisdom. Well, on today’s edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, we’re going to discover some practical strategies for raising financially savvy kids who understand both the value of a dollar as well as God’s perspective on stewardship. Our guests today here on Family Talk are Ron and Judy Blue, longtime friends of Dr. and Mrs. Dobson. Ron Blue serves as president of Kingdom Advisors, an international organization equipping Christian financial professionals to implement biblical wisdom. He’s the author of over a dozen books on personal finance from a biblical perspective. His wife, Judy Blue, has spent decades teaching and encouraging women as a popular speaker at seminars and retreats. Together, Ron and Judy have co-authored several books, including the one we’ll be focusing on today. It’s called Your Kids Can Master Their Money, Fun Ways to Help Them Learn How. Ron and Judy Blue’s journey in financial ministry began in 1979 at Farrell’s Ice Cream Shop in Atlanta, where they sketched their life goals on three napkins. Little did they know this conversation would launch them into the life work of helping families manage their resources according to biblical principles. The Blues developed their own innovative envelope system while raising their own children, a method that teaches responsibility, generosity, and wise stewardship. On today’s program, they’ll share how this simple approach can transform how your family thinks about money. So let’s get into it right now on today’s edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, our guests are two friends that go way, way back for Shirley and me, Ron and Judy Blue. Ron is currently the president of Kingdom Advisors, which is an international effort to equip and motivate Christian financial professionals to implement biblical wisdom that results in financial freedom and increased giving, which is something I feel strongly about.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
He’s the author of over a dozen books on personal finance from a biblical perspective. He’s also been on this broadcast over a dozen times going back to, I think, and we were talking about this before the program, I think in 1983. So we’ve been working together for a long time.
SPEAKER 03 :
We have.
SPEAKER 04 :
You still look pretty good.
SPEAKER 03 :
So do you, Jim. Well, maybe it’s our eyesight.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. I think somebody said that to me the other day. I was looking younger. I said, as you get old, your vision is fading. We are also very pleased to have Ron’s better half with us today. Judy is here for the first time. I don’t know where you’ve been all those years, Judy, but we’re glad to have you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I’m grateful to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
SPEAKER 04 :
You have a great heart for teaching and One that we want to turn our attention to today called Your Kids Can Master Their Money, Fun Ways to Help Them Learn How by Ron and Judy Blue and Jeremy White. And we’re going to be talking generally about that subject. And a lot of the concepts that are in this book came out of your own home.
SPEAKER 03 :
They’re autobiographical, aren’t they, Ron? Yeah, you know, the books that I’ve written over the years, you can kind of follow my life. And this one was written – this is probably Judy and I’s favorite book because we had such joy in raising our kids. And now we’ve been able to kind of look back. Our oldest is 40 now. And our greatest time of life was really raising those kids. And it’s a little bit sad, you know, today when you look around and we still obviously have influence, but it’s not the same. We loved it. And we love training our kids in all the principles of life.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, that’s why when our youngest, Ryan, went off to college, it took me three days to get over it. I cried for three days. I really did because of what you’re talking about. That was a very meaningful, precious time in my life. And I knew it was over. A month later, it sounded like a pretty good idea, you know. You could get used to it. I could get used to the house being cleaner and quieter. But you obviously worked with your own children in understanding money. Can you get kids interested in thrift and savings and using money wisely according to biblical principles? Is that something you can get them into?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, I think you can, and I think it’s a great vehicle to empower them and educate them for being responsible on a lot of areas. Because there aren’t a lot of things in their life that you can give them absolute control over, if you will. Yeah. And you literally are willing as a parent to release the money that you put in those envelopes, which is really just money that you’re spending on them anyway.
SPEAKER 04 :
We’re going to talk about that. And that’s a centerpiece of your book. And it’s a good one. This generation of young people really does not, I think, grasp the biblical uses and abuses of money.
SPEAKER 03 :
Do you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. There’s no consistent teaching. Matter of fact, you were talking about teaching and who teaches your kids and who do you think is teaching your kids. Interesting, the only curriculum in the schools today on money and money management is developed and taught by the credit card companies, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. There just is no good teaching unless the parents do it. None. The churches don’t do it. The schools don’t do it. If the parents don’t accept the responsibility to train their children, they won’t get taught.
SPEAKER 04 :
So it should not surprise us that many young married couples think they can get what their parents accumulated in a lifetime in the first few years. And they find themselves fussing and fighting over money because there’s not enough to go around and not enough to even go out to dinner together or be together or take a vacation together. It really does affect marriage, too, doesn’t it, Judy?
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, yes. And I think that basically, and just thinking about the bigger picture of everything in our culture, we live in a pretty boundary-less society. You know, there are no boundaries with finances for many people because they think they can just go get another credit card. And there are not moral boundaries. So I think basically it’s a reflection of that. lack of boundaries.
SPEAKER 04 :
Before we get into the principles in your book, what occurs when the parents have been so irresponsible with their money and really have kind of made a mess out of it? And now they’re going to try to teach their kids to be disciplined and able to make good decisions, to understand the biblical principles. You all are up against a real barrier there when the people you’re teaching to teach others haven’t got a clue.
SPEAKER 02 :
They don’t have a clue. And in order for them to feel good about teaching their children, they’ve got to go back and start with themselves. So you’ve got a barrier that you have to overcome.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, I remember what one of my mentors that you know well, Jim, Dr. Howard Hendricks, he always says, more is caught than taught. And that was a principle that Judy and I lived by, that if we weren’t doing it, our kids could never, ever catch it. And no matter how much teaching we did. And the other one was that you don’t know whether you’ve been a good parent until your children have raised their children, which gives a really good perspective on the whole parenting thing. My own feeling is that money, the way you work out money decisions is a reflection of your spirituality, right? It’s the most direct reflection of where you are spiritually. So the opportunity that parents have to use money to teach children, they’re really teaching them biblical principles, and they’re teaching them how to live life according to God’s Word. And it’s one of those areas where you can’t fake how you manage money.
SPEAKER 04 :
Ron, does it bother you, and I’m sure it does, that the statistics that I’ve read show that only about 20 percent of Christians give to God’s kingdom through the church or anybody else, that 80 percent don’t give at all?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it’s even worse than that, really, because according to George Barna statistics, only 7% of evangelical born-again Christians have a biblical worldview, meaning that they make their decisions according to what God’s Word has to say. So the giving statistics are just reflective of what people believe, because all behavior is a function of belief and They just don’t believe what God’s Word says. So, yeah, it really bothers me.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think the first principle of money that my parents taught me, it actually began with my grandmother, was to give 10% when I was three and four years of age. I remember my grandmother gave me a dollar, and the next Sunday I put a dime. into the offering plate. It was a very important aspect of my training. And I’ve never understood Christians who don’t see it that way, because how can you say God owns my entire life? Lord, I’m a follower of yours, and I won’t give you a dime. Did you teach your kids to tithe as an understanding of the fact that God owns it all?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, we did. That was a totally integrated part of the envelope system that we used with the kids.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right. You’ve mentioned that twice. Let’s talk about it. About the envelope system? The envelope system was a mechanism, a system that you developed that taught many of the principles that are in this book. So let’s talk about them. Explain what that is. I’ve heard this, Ron, from you in the past. Judy, I want to hear it from you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Now you’re going to listen to the one who really made it work, Jim.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, she got the biggest envelope.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, you know, the envelope system works for adults, too. I just want to say that. Because what it does is if you go get cash and put it in respective envelopes, and as adults, if it’s for gasoline and food and whatever, when the envelope is empty, you quit spending. So there’s so many principles built in to the system. But then you reinforce it, obviously, with the verbal interaction with your kids. But we had a spending envelope, a saving envelope, an envelope for clothing. one for gifts, and then one for tithing. And the spending and the saving were 10% of the other ones. And we ran out of children. The youngest child that we started the system with was five, but it was amazing how well he took to it. And obviously, when you give a five-year-old their clothes money, you don’t make them responsible for as many clothing items as you would your 16-year-old. Yes. So it’s a matter of making it age specific. But they respond so well. Jim, when our kids were growing up, their friends, parents would call me and say, what are you doing with your kids financially? Because my kids want to do the same thing. But they had freedom and power within themselves. very defined limits. And I think it’s, I’m trying to remember who it is that says that the definition of freedom is the power to do what you ought to do. So having those built-in boundaries gives them so much security.
SPEAKER 04 :
All right, let me see if I understand now. You’ve got, we’ll say, a 10-year-old, and you’ve got all these envelopes, and cash goes into those envelopes. That’s right. And it’s going to be a great temptation to dip in there and spend it for the wrong things. It isn’t really valid unless they have the ability to do the wrong thing as well as the right thing.
SPEAKER 02 :
That is correct. But what we did with each of our kids was it was always an annual meeting. And you sit down so that they understand what they’re responsible for out of each envelope and what the rules are as far as putting money between envelopes or borrowing Peter to pay Paul kind of thing. So they understood the system. And you had joint commitment as to what they were responsible for and what the process was. So for the most part, we did not have trouble with our kids borrowing from one envelope to the other.
SPEAKER 04 :
When cold weather would come along in October, it’s time to get a new coat. And you can get coats that don’t cost very much, and you can get very expensive coats. So if a kid goes down and selects a very expensive coat that robs the other envelopes, you allow them to do that?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, now, clothing was confined to the clothing envelope. I’m pretty sure that we did not let them go out of that. They could always work to make extra. But what we would do with them is to sit down and say, OK, what kind of clothing items do you need for this next year? About how much do you think that will cost? And then we would break it out over the 12-month period and either give them their allowance every two weeks or every week if they were younger or once a month if they were older. So then that they had the monies and they also had the plan to go with it. And sometimes there were blips in the system and, you know, you had to sit down and my one grandson grew four inches last year. Well, you know, you have to have a whole lot more genes if you grow four inches in one year than if you grow a half an inch.
SPEAKER 04 :
But they don’t have to be designer jeans.
SPEAKER 02 :
Exactly. But there’s so much freedom in them being able to choose between designer and not. We had one child who would have far rather gone and bought two polo shirts and only had two shirts. And another daughter who would have far rather gone to Target and bought her stuff there because she could get more. And if it had been coming out of my pocket, I would not have been able to let them do that. That would have bothered me too much. But that’s what I’m saying. You know, once you put in the envelope, you have to have agreed with the child what the rules and the system are. Yes. And then let them have let them make their mistakes.
SPEAKER 04 :
I have a friend that used this system, and they had one child who was very irresponsible just by her nature, and she did buy a very expensive coat. And then through the rest of the year, she did not have clothing for school, and she wore socks with holes in them, and the parents allowed her to learn from that. It was a very important lesson. Did you ever have to allow them to do something that hurt you?
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, my goodness, yes. Yes. But, you know, far better that they learn a $100 mistake or a $200 mistake than the people that we see as adults that are making thousands and thousands of dollar mistakes because they don’t have the boundaries. They put it on a credit card and you pay for a long time.
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, Judy and I operated off of a budget. So we knew that we had allocated X number of dollars for our family for these particular items. And then we followed the principle that we want to give them the responsibility for that part of the budget. And we put it into the budget. We put it into the envelopes. It’s no different than the old cookie jar method. You know, when dad came home from work at the end of the week and he put the dollars in the cookie jar and they took it out for groceries and gas and so forth, but they stopped when the cookie jar was empty. Well, we just had five cookie jars. We called them envelopes. And we wanted to teach them that God owns it all. We wanted to teach them to live within their income. And we had one more principle, and that was that children learn responsibility by having responsibility. And so you can’t expect them to learn those things. You want them to learn by telling them. They’ve got to experience them. That’s why mistakes are so important.
SPEAKER 04 :
You destroy the entire understanding of money. When you give them too much and too easily and disconnect that from work.
SPEAKER 03 :
Absolutely. Because if they didn’t have enough, it’s like the code illustration. If they didn’t have enough, well, that’s fine. Get a job. I mean, maybe we would provide a job or if they were old enough to babysit or whatever, they could earn more money. Or, this is un-American, they could spend less. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
You know, when my daughter was three, we had three little jars. They were baby food jars. And I had written on top of the three jars, Jesus, spend, and save. And those were the three that she could understand. But she didn’t fully get it. And she had ways of earning money by doing the right things. They got pennies that went in there. And every day there was the good humor man that came along. And my daughter would get very excited about that when she heard the song. And she had not been very disciplined about getting songs. ready for that ice cream truck when it came along. And she came tearing into the house and went to the jars and the spin jar was empty. And she brought it to me and said, Daddy, Daddy, we got to get some more money in here. But I didn’t give her money on that occasion.
SPEAKER 03 :
And if you do, you destroy the whole system. You really do. Again, it comes back to this. They’ve got to have responsibility in order to learn responsibility. It’s really riskless almost for the parents. It’s not that way in some of the moral decisions that they face and some of those other challenges, but you can in the money area, which is why I think it’s so critical to parenting to teach that. Credit cards never got anybody in a problem. Okay, it’s the person holding the credit card that got into problems. Okay, so credit cards are not a sin. They’re not a problem, really. The only thing with a credit card is if you use it for convenience, pay it off every month. And if you can’t pay it off every month, then you’re using it irresponsibly. But by the time our youngest reached high school, we knew we had to teach our kids how to use a credit card. Because they were going to get them in college, and they were going to use them for the rest of their life, really. And you really can’t function in this society without the credit card. So they’ve got to learn how to use it. And what better way to learn than watching what mom and dad do? They’re going to do what you did, okay? You know, our kids now are raised, and we can see some of the fruits of that. Interestingly enough, none of them were going to use the envelope system with their kids. But they already had all these principles. And so they just naturally used them. And they almost did not understand the significance of what they had been taught. You used to have four principles.
SPEAKER 04 :
We don’t have time to list them. But one of the four is that there is a tradeoff between work and money. Absolutely.
SPEAKER 03 :
There’s a tradeoff between time and effort and money and rewards. Yeah.
SPEAKER 04 :
And if you don’t get that straight, you’ve got irresponsibility all over the place.
SPEAKER 03 :
You really do. There’s not a free lunch, if you will. You’ve got to work for it.
SPEAKER 04 :
There is so much practical stuff in this book on bill paying, getting your kids involved in paying the bill so they can see where this money is going. I remember my dad was making $25 a a week as a pastor when I was six years old, and I remember saying, where’s all that money go? And they sat out and talked to me about all the things they had to pay with it. I can’t believe they got anything done with 25 bucks that they did. The stock market, do you ever allow kids to invest in the stock market? What do you do with birthdays? That’s the one that used to bother me, Because we would invite all of the little friends in, and every one of them would bring a gift. And our kids would be busting open eight or 10 or 12 gifts. And it just seemed like too much to me. And I think others go through that, too. There’s so much more here. We’re just going to have to refer them to the book, Your Kids Can Master Their Money, which is yours for the most part. Yeah. Fun ways to help them learn how. Ron and Judy Blue and Jeremy White. I appreciate you guys publishing this and for your friendship. And Ron, before too long, we’re going to do two more programs. And as long as we both live, you’ll be sitting at this table.
SPEAKER 03 :
Jim, my relationship with you has been one of the special things in my life. Thank you. Well, it goes two ways.
SPEAKER 02 :
Judy, I feel really honored to be here. And I, too, consider you a cherished friend. So thank you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Managing money wisely as a family teaches our children lasting values that will shape their future and their faith. You’ve been listening to Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk and an insightful conversation with Ron and Judy Blue about their practical approach to raising financially responsible children. Their envelope system offers a simple yet effective way to instill biblical money principles that can last a lifetime. Now, if you missed any portion of today’s broadcast, or if you’d like to share these valuable lessons with a friend or family member who is also raising children, visit drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. Once you’re there, you’ll find the complete program along with information about the Blues book called Your Kids Can Master Their Money, Fun Ways to Help Them Learn How. Well, you know, we are celebrating 15 years of ministry here at the James Dobson Family Institute. And to do so, we’re inviting you to be a part of something special. If Dr. Dobson’s wisdom has strengthened your marriage or if a broadcast you’ve heard on Family Talk has encouraged you through a tough season, we would love to hear your story. Your tribute will be a meaningful gift as we look ahead to what God has in store. When you go to drjamesdobson.org, you’ll find a very special ministry page where you can write your testimony. You can also record it over the phone, or you can send it to us on video. But regardless of how you contact us, please make sure you reach out today. Again, you’ll find information on how you can give a gift, if you will, to Dr. Dobson by sharing your testimony about how Family Talk has helped you when you go to drjamesdobson.org. Here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we are passionate about equipping families with biblical principles that support marriage and child development. When you support this ministry, you’re helping preserve the institution of the family and to promote the biblical foundations on which it stands. Every day we receive messages from parents and couples who have found hope and practical guidance through these broadcasts. Your generosity makes these life-changing moments possible. For over five decades, Dr. James Dobson has championed family values and your support ensures this legacy continues to impact future generations as well. It’s part of the dynamic legacy we’re building here at the JDFI. So whether you can give a one-time gift or become a monthly partner, please know that your tax-deductible donation will directly help us reach families with biblical truth. Now you can call us with your gift at 877-732-6825. That’s 877-732-6825. Or if you’d like to make a secure donation online, go to DrJamesDobson.org. And by the way, for more daily encouragement on parenting and family life, I encourage you to explore the wealth of resources available on our website, newly updated and expanded. From broadcasts and articles to blog posts and free devotionals, we’ve created a library of helpful materials to support you on your parenting journey and to help you with your marriage as well. Simply visit drjamesdobson.org and click the Resources tab from the homepage. to discover tools that will strengthen your family relationships. Whether you’re looking for guidance on teaching financial literacy to your children, like we talked about today, or strengthening your marriage or even navigating the teen years, and good luck with that, you’ll find biblically-based wisdom just a click away. We’ve organized everything by topic so you can easily find exactly what you need during any season of family life. So please go to drjamesdobson.org and browse a while. And by the way, when you’re online with us, you can also sign up for our monthly newsletter as well. That’s drjamesdobson.org. Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and on behalf of Dr. Dobson and all of us here at Family Talk, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love.
SPEAKER 03 :
This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.
