Painting for College

College is expensive, ridiculously expensive.

In our house, my husband and I try to teach our kids about finances, about the future, what to expect as they grow older so they won't be completely shocked and overwhelmed with financial burdens like we were at a young age.

They're still young, and probably already tired of the talks, but hopefully a morsel of the information will soak in and they will enter adulthood at least one step ahead of where we began our journeys.

As parents, that's what we want for our kids right? - to raise them to be respectable, well mannered humans that do life better than us and achieve more.

With all this being said, the conversation of college came up with my ten year old the other day, and since then, he has been hounding me to get this ball rolling; he only has eight more years to save after all before he starts school.

We were discussing my artwork as a business as I was working and he asked if he could also sell his own work to help save for college. I informed him that just because he paints a picture and slaps a price on it doesn't mean it's going to sell, that I can list it for him, but it may go nowhere but to his bedroom wall.

His response to that was, "So. I think it's pretty, so if it doesn't sell then I get to keep it, but if it does sell, then someone else will like it too and I have money for school."

I guess I'm doing something right, because that's exactly how I feel, except insert retirement plan for school. Ha.

We discussed going into this with the right mentality, that he won't make a gazillion dollars overnight, but anything he does make will go towards his future, and not the next video game consul or dirt bike. He agrees, so here I am, writing a post about selling artwork for my 10 year old's 8 year plan.

His plan: paint his own pictures, sell the art, put the funds into an educational savings account, and not have to get an enormous amount of student loan debt just to go to school like his parents did.

I say that's a pretty decent plan.

I will of course extend the offer to my other kids, so they can choose to start funding their future now or not; they are kids after all and need to enjoy childhood, but I'm not going to squash the entrepreneurial desires of one just because of the amount of birthdays he's had.

I'd love more than anything for this to flourish for him; to see that anything is possible if you set your mind and heart to it and are willing to put forth the effort to make your dreams happen.

There will be updates along the way, and maybe even branching out to offer a selling platform for other young entrepreneurs, but let me get this up and started first. :)

Thanks for your visit, and until next time, I appreciate you!

-Ang