A simple pause can change your financial life. 

 

On this episode of Get Ready Before Life Happens, I spoke with Karen Holland, founder of the nonprofit Gifting Sense and creator of the DIMS “Does It Make Sense?” Score Calculator.

 

We explore how slowing down leads to better decisions, why mindful friction improves spending, and how the DIMS framework helps you evaluate purchases with clarity. Karen shares how 

to understand trade-offs, avoid common buying mistakes, and build habits that support long-term financial confidence for both adults and kids.

 

Key Takeaways

 

🔹 Pausing before a decision creates space for clearer thinking and better outcomes

🔹 Asking “Does it make sense?” leads to more intentional and aligned spending

🔹 Understanding full costs, including fees and ongoing expenses, improves decision quality

🔹 Buyer’s remorse often comes from acting quickly, overestimating use, and focusing on short-term excitement

🔹 Adding friction to spending decisions helps reduce impulse purchases and increase satisfaction

🔹 Teaching kids to slow down and evaluate choices builds lifelong financial confidence

🔹 Mindful spending supports both personal goals and broader impact, including sustainability

 

 Tony’s Take: A pause is one of the most powerful financial tools we have. When you ask better questions before you spend, you make decisions you feel good about long after the moment passes. That’s how money becomes a tool for intention.

 

 🎥 Watch this episode below: 

 

🎧 Listen to the podcast below or on your favorite podcast app. 

 

Connect with Karen Holland: 

 

• Gifting Sense Website  (here)
• LinkedIn (here)

 

Resources:

 

• DIMS SCORE® Calculator (here)
• Back-to-School List Builder (here)

 

Bio: 

 

Karen Holland has been making learning about money immediately helpful to school-aged children for over 9 years through her early financial education Not-For-Profit Gifting Sense, home of the DIMS - DOES IT MAKE SENSE?® SCORE Calculator. A free and safe online tool that introduces children to the habit of asking & answering simple questions about typical childhood purchases, before, anyone spends a dime. Karen worked for Canada’s largest bank before having a family that is now grown up. She has an Honours Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics and a Master’s Degree in Economic History. 

 

Gifting Sense has been recognized at the Money Awareness & Inclusion Awards three years running, in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

In collaboration with The Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards (the MAIAs) which celebrate the increasingly important work being done to help people understand money better. Learn more: https://www.maiawards.org.   

👉 Start Your Financial Readiness Plan: A free, practical plan that helps you create your in-case-of-emergency Financial First Aid Kit, organize what matters, and prepare before life happens. Start Your Free Financial Readiness Plan  https://www.tonysteuer.com

 

👉 Support the Mission: Become a Get Ready Insider and receive access to the Get Ready Library while helping support my mission to help people prepare before life happens. Become a Get Ready Insider  https://www.tonysteuer.com/get-ready-insider

Lightly Edited Transcript: Karen Holland

Tony Steuer:
Get ready before life happens. The podcast helping you navigate life’s what-ifs.

What if every purchase came with one simple question: does it make sense?

Welcome to Get Ready: Before Life Happens. I’m pleased to be joined today by my friend Karen Holland.

Karen, welcome back to Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

Karen Holland:
Thank you, Tony. I’m so happy to be here.

Tony:
I’m glad to have you on. You’ve developed a really cool resource called the Does It Make Sense Calculator, which you and I have talked about. I’m a huge fan of it, and I hope after listening to this episode, everybody out there will check it out and see how it can make a difference for them.

Karen, tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your origin story, and how did it lead you to focusing on helping young people think before they buy?

Karen:
It was super organic, not on purpose.

I’m one of three girls. Our mother was a kindergarten teacher, a whip-smart kindergarten teacher.

The summer before eighth grade, she had us make a list of everything we would need for back to school. We thought this was amazing, so we made a super comprehensive list. We really went to town, and we had to give a number for everything on the list.

Then my mom tallied it up, divided it by the ten months of the school year, and gave us a check.

Kids, that’s a piece of paper you take to the bank that lets you get a certain amount of money out.

She gave us a check for the first day of every month, and we had to buy everything. She was giving us the purchasing power.

When it first started, I remember that September like yesterday. My twin sister Kathy and I were like, “Why are we even going to school? We’re loaded.”

We got $79, which was a lot of money.

Of course, my mother was so smart. She knew that list was not comprehensive. It did not cover everything.

We got really good at quickly making trade-offs because we knew that if we bought one thing, we were trading future purchasing power.

Fast forward. I have my own family. I spent 12 years on the sidelines of baseball and hockey games. You’re going to tournaments and spending every weekend with the same families. We parent in tribes.

It became obvious that other families didn’t have this same simple structure in place for spending, which is asking: does this make sense?

Is this something I’ll still want next week? Am I confusing short-term excitement with lasting value? Do I understand the full cost, not just the price tag?

And, certainly relevant for today’s kids: have I really thought this through, or am I just clicking buy?

I started asking my friends’ kids these questions. By the time Matt went off to school, people were saying, “Go talk to Karen.”

Then I wireframed the site because I saw how helpful it was.

There’s a very iconic financial reporter, Rob Carrick, and I’ve spoken about him before. He said, “What are you really doing, Karen? What are you doing?”

I said, “I’m just slowing them down.”

Because when we take a beat, we make better choices.

The problem, Tony, is that today’s environment has been engineered to remove all the helpful pauses that you and I grew up with.

Tony:
You and I have had that conversation before. It’s about friction.

When we were young, if you wanted something, you had to get money out of the bank. The bank wasn’t open every day, all day. Then you had to get yourself to whatever store it was. I’m thinking records or comic books in my case.

The store had to be open. You had to have enough cash to buy it. It took some work to make a purchase.

Now Amazon has “buy it now,” and then you may have it an hour later.

Karen:
Friction is not all bad. It creates resilience.

Think about how we engage with friction purposefully to be fit because we know it will make us stronger. So why are we removing it in all of these other facets of life?

Parents today grew up with at least some friction, but their children are digital payment system natives, and it is so frictionless.

It is hard for us to understand how algorithmic persuasion is embedded in every platform that teenagers, young people, and, frankly, we ourselves use every day.

These are not benign, neutral tools.

A young person arriving in this environment without a practiced habit of reflection has a much harder time being thoughtful about how they spend. It really is not their fault.

Tony:
I’ve gone through that with my son.

I’ve tried to tell him, “Look, this stuff is designed to get you to buy.” There are limited drops and all these other things. It’s constantly coming at them.

Like you said, it’s so easy to do.

What tips do you have for parents who are thinking, “How do I even begin to give my kids a sense of friction?”

Karen:
Just last week, a parent made a comment to me, and I realized I’ve heard it before, but they said it really succinctly.

Basically, the Does It Make Sense Calculator asks questions that parents have asked, but the child does not give attitude to the calculator.

As a child, you don’t give attitude to the Does It Make Sense Calculator. You just answer the questions because you know there’s method to the madness.

You want to get to the score. You want to produce the shareable summary. You want to sit down and have a conversation with your parents about possibly moving this purchase from wishlist to reality.

The phrase I thought was hilarious was “ophthalmic calisthenics.” The Does It Make Sense Calculator doesn’t get eye rolls. No ophthalmic calisthenics from the kids.

It really is as simple as slowing down.

We use a lot of driving metaphors. What I think we’re missing in society at large is spending ed.

We have driver’s ed. We don’t just hand teenagers car keys and hope for the best. We give them structured practice in lower-stakes settings before the consequences get serious.

Why not do the same with money?

Similar to driver’s ed, spending ed is not the final destination. It’s the trip preparation that helps the future unfold the way we want it to.

One reason we’ve been so successful in partnering with other organizations is that they know we’re not doing anything duplicative. We’re not competing with what they’re doing.

We’re helping their work land more powerfully because we’re giving kids this lived experience of getting and using financial information to help them make decisions they’re happier with, not just in the short term but in the long term.

It doesn’t take much distance to take a backward glance and say, “Wow, I spared myself and my family. That was great.”

Success is tasty.

Once you discover that you can get and use financial information quite easily to help you make good decisions, why would you ever stop?

Tony:
That’s so good.

What you said about thinking helping you make decisions for the long term is important because everybody has probably had that feeling where they bought something and thought, “What was I thinking? Why did I buy that?”

When you rush in, it is hard to take a beat. But when you do take a beat, you can often pull yourself back.

I’ve talked about this with guests when discussing scams and frauds. Fraudsters try to get you to make the decision right now under pressure. That is how a lot of these things are presented to our kids: you have to make this decision now. You can’t wait.

Karen:
That’s a huge red flag.

Pressure is a huge red flag. Anybody who is putting pressure on you does not have your best interest at heart. They should want you to feel comfortable.

One thing Rob really liked is this phrasing: we are not in the “feel bad about spending” business. We are in the “think more about spending” business.

One question we ask in workshops is: what’s a purchase you made where you thought, “That is the best money I ever spent. I use that thing all the time. It has been so helpful. It has lasted forever.”

So I’ll ask you, Tony. What’s a purchase that was great money spent?

Tony:
Thinking offhand, I’d say one of my cars. The reason is that my car is over 15 years old, so I got maximum value from it instead of buying a new car every two to three years.

That’s a great budget helper for anybody.

Karen:
That feeling of knowing you spent money well and it has been a great purchase, that’s the feeling I want kids to have for most purchases.

It’s not possible to have that for all purchases, and of course we learn from missteps. But I want kids to have that confidence, excitement, and deep satisfaction for most of their purchases.

What’s so powerful about that is that it preserves future purchasing power.

When you only buy things that you’ll actually use and appreciate and take care of, almost by default, you create future purchasing power because you stop buying things that are underappreciated or underutilized.

Tony:
I love that.

When you are just buying random things and not thinking about it, you don’t have much satisfaction. You end up not using a lot of the stuff you buy.

It’s a very short-term hit. Would it be adrenaline?

Karen:
Dopamine, I think they say.

Most kids expect, “Oh, I’m coming to a thinking-before-buying workshop or a mindful spending workshop. Do I really want to learn how to save money?”

Maybe it doesn’t strike them as so interesting.

One common piece of feedback we get is, “That was so much better than I thought it was going to be.”

I’m like, “Great. I’m so glad.”

It’s not about deprivation.

Let me put it to you another way. I think the question we should be starting with is, “Does it make sense?” not “Can I afford it?”

If something makes sense in your life, you’re going to figure out a way to afford it.

Maybe it will reduce your commute, make your day-to-day better, let you have hot lunches, or help you feel good when you’re running.

If a purchase fits your life well, and you’re really going to use and appreciate it, then you’re going to figure out a way to afford it.

So the first question should be: does it make sense? Does it fit your life?

If it really does, maybe it takes months or sometimes years to afford it. But it’s easier to give up other purchases when you know your North Star. This is the thing I want.

For example, many kids this year have been hoping for World Cup tickets. It’s the first time the World Cup will be in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.

We had this little visual goal tracker, the Worth the Wait Goal Tracker, and they put it on the fridge.

You’re eating your cereal in the morning before school and you see that goal tracker. Maybe a friend says, “Let’s go get a slice or a latte.”

You can go and be social, but you might say to yourself, “I’m not going to spend $10 on snack food after school because I know I’m only $10 away from those tickets or the jersey or the jacket I want.”

Spending with a plan, as we say on our homepage, is fun and worth it.

Some people are like, “Really?” And I’m like, “It totally is.”

It is fun and worth it because you actually get the thing you know you will use and appreciate. It is deeply satisfying.

What are we really doing? We’re showing kids that they have agency.

Tony:
I think all of us have agency.

I’m also thinking about “does it make sense” in respect to my calendar. Time is one of our most valuable assets, and we’re often very free with our calendars. But that spends our time.

I don’t know how some people do it, where they have calendar slots open from 8 to 5 every day of the week. I’m like, “Holy cow.”

Karen:
Oh no, that’s not me.

Sometimes people are like, “There’s nothing for six weeks.” And I’m like, “Well, I’m in schools or I’m doing whatever.”

I know one gentleman in the UK who specifically slots out a chunk every day for deep thinking.

I agree with you. That’s one of the ways you should think about “does it make sense?”

Tony:
I love it.

I know that’s not the intent, but when you say “does it make sense” and it can be applied everywhere, I am wholeheartedly on board.

One of the things we talk about is pausing before making a decision.

Why is that pause so important before making a financial decision, or really any decision?

Karen:
Because sticker prices never reveal the full cost.

It doesn’t take a lot of time. The Does It Make Sense Calculator is quick, but not arbitrary.

There are ancillary costs and phantom costs.

Ancillary costs are the things that don’t take too much time to realize. For example, if you’re going to a concert, you either need to take the subway there or pay for parking.

A phantom cost might be buying a Rainbow Loom and not thinking about the fact that once you go through the initial package of elastics, you need more elastics.

When you pause and answer the questions, and there are no liver transplants or multivariable calculus here, these are very straightforward questions.

How often are you going to use it? Can a younger sibling or cousin use it when you’re done with it? If you’re buying sports equipment to try out for a team, sometimes coaches know where you can borrow the equipment before making that big commitment.

It takes two to five minutes to answer these questions, but it helps you understand the full on-time delivered cost of what you are buying.

That is a very different number than the price tag.

Things like buy now, pay later, which I know you and I are not fans of, cut the cost in four.

There are four reasons we experience buyer’s remorse: we overestimate use, we underestimate cost, we mistake short-term excitement for lasting value, and we act too quickly.

Buy now, pay later exacerbates three of those. It doesn’t exacerbate overestimating use, but it does lead you to underestimate cost, it accelerates your decision, it lets you mistake short-term excitement for lasting value, and it reduces friction.

Pausing is like a superpower. It’s free. Anybody can take a beat.

I almost can’t think of a situation where you shouldn’t pause. I guess if a train is rolling down the track, don’t pause. Go on instinct.

But when you’re shopping and buying something, take a minute.

That’s why we’re called Gifting Sense. Developing the habit of pausing, gathering information, and reflecting before you spend your money, or anybody else’s, is a gift.

If you’re asking for a birthday or holiday gift, you’re asking somebody to spend money. Take a beat.

You won’t be disappointed, and the people who care about you won’t waste time and money running around buying things you don’t want anyway, won’t use, and won’t appreciate.

Then, of course, we could talk for an hour about the environmental consequences.

Tony:
Karen, take us through a full calculation.

Maybe let’s talk about going to a concert. Walk us through the process someone would go through with the Does It Make Sense Calculator when thinking about going to a concert.

Karen:
First, when we talk about a process, let’s be clear. The first time you go through it, maybe it takes five minutes. Every time after that, it’s two to three.

We’ll call it a process, and it is quick but not arbitrary.

It’s really split into three parts.

The first part is just the numbers: the actual price, and if relevant, sales tax and shipping. For a concert, you need the ticket price, which often includes all these fees, like venue fees.

Then you move to safe transportation. You’re going to want something to eat and drink. Very few venues allow outside food and drink in the venue.

That was one interesting thing we discovered when we launched in the United Kingdom. Some venues there allow you to bring brown bag lunches, which would be fantastic for families. But that’s often not the case in North America.

If it’s your first concert, your seminal concert, you may want a souvenir. What is that going to cost?

What if something happens and you can’t take the subway home and have to take an Uber?

You have to plan for those things.

The first part is understanding the numbers.

The second part is thinking more deeply about how this purchase fits into your life.

The number one question is: do you know when and where this event takes place?

Kids ask, “Why do we have to know that?”

I say, “First of all, everything depends on the date: the cost of transportation, when the concert is, whether you have to miss school.”

Missing school isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, as long as you have a plan to make up the missed work. But that’s information your parents need.

Our whole life is making the case. You have to make the case to your employer, make the case to your spouse when deciding whether you should purchase something.

So it exercises that “make your case” muscle.

The exciting thing is, when kids go through and answer those questions, they sometimes stop themselves.

They say, “Wait a minute. This is much more money than I realized. I want to recalibrate and maybe think about doing something else.”

The first part is math. The second part is thinking about how hard it is to execute, like how hard it is to get there.

One question that’s in every Does It Make Sense score calculation is: does this purchase tell the rest of the world what you want them to know about you?

That is our euphemism for: is it values-aligned?

We define values for kids as the ideas and beliefs your family upholds.

That can be where people stop themselves.

We use funny examples in workshops. I always ask, “Tony, what’s a vegetable you don’t enjoy eating?”

Tony:
Tomatoes. Actually, a tomato is a fruit.

Karen:
We’ll go with tomatoes.

Good news, Tony. Next weekend, there’s a tomato festival two minutes from your house. Are you going?

Tony:
Nope.

Karen:
What if all your friends were going to be there?

Tony:
It’s a tomato festival. No chance. But otherwise, I’d think about it.

Karen:
You have a sense of self.

Sometimes kids will say, “I’m going to go. I’m just not going to eat tomatoes because they’re not my jam.”

But here’s the problem. A week after you went to the tomato festival, you’re going to a friend’s house for dinner. They’re planning the menu, and the older brother says, “I saw Tony at the tomato festival, so let’s have tomato soup, toasted tomato sandwiches,” whatever it is.

Social media is an issue for lots of reasons, but one of them is that when we buy something or go somewhere, it’s not private.

It is telling the rest of the world something about you.

So we try to make it funny.

A more realistic example would be downloading music. You may just like the rhythm and the beat. You’re not paying attention to the lyrics, which could contain words that hurt someone else’s feelings.

Or maybe you put a sticker on a longboard or a binder. You like the color or shape, but maybe it has a symbol that hurts someone’s feelings.

It’s the last question in every Does It Make Sense score calculation: is this purchase or event telling the rest of the world what you want?

Then you answer the questions, and we distill those answers into a score out of 10.

If you generate a Does It Make Sense score of 8 or greater, that means you probably have enough information to proceed and have a conversation with your parents or caregivers about moving this possible purchase from wishlist to reality.

You can generate a shareable summary of all that math and thinking, called the DIMS Score Report.

Those are the three parts. I took five minutes to describe it, but it happens very quickly once a young person is used to the platform.

Tony:
That is a beautiful description. I appreciate you sharing it.

I think we can apply this to so many things. Adults can apply this too.

When someone talks about buying a new car, I say, “Think about the registration, the insurance, which will be higher on a new car, and all these other things that go with it. You want to try to avoid the warranty they sell you at the dealership.”

Karen:
We just released a First Car Does It Make Sense.

Tony:
That’s right. I forgot.

Karen:
That is the most consequential choice we’ve helped young people with. Before that, it was pets.

It has been on fire.

Someone wrote to us and said, “This speaks of privilege, a car for a teenager.”

But in many rural communities where there’s no public transportation, kids are thinking about a car from a very early age.

We’re not talking about a brand-new car. They’re almost always first, second-hand cars, or second, second-hand cars.

But we need these kids to understand that even if you get a fantastic deal on a first car, you’re exactly right. There are all those other things.

Insurance is a huge cost. Maintenance. Repairs never happen when it’s convenient. It’s always when it’s inconvenient. Gas is a topical number. How much is gas going to cost?

It lays bare all the components of a purchase.

Here’s the exciting thing: kids are like everybody else. When they see those numbers, they automatically know what does or does not make sense for them and their family.

Sometimes school administrators are a little reticent. They say, “We don’t want to put any pressure on our parents.”

I say, “I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t know everything, but trust me, kids are so aware of their family situation.”

They stop themselves.

I was in Southern San Diego last week at a school, and the school superintendent who brought us into one of her middle schools shared that she was working with a student who wanted a cat.

They got to the food question, and Liz said, “I just bought cat food for my cat. It was $40 for one month. So you need to go 12 times $40.”

The student stopped right there and said, “$480 just to feed the cat?”

Liz said, “Yeah.”

The student said, “Okay, time out.”

It’s such a worthwhile process.

Parents report getting fewer, better-quality requests to spend. Kids feel like they’re part of the conversation. They have agency.

The reason it improves family harmony is that it gets all family members singing from the same song sheet.

All of a sudden, the kids understand what the big deal is.

I always say most family discord about spending is answering the question: what’s the big deal?

“What’s the big deal? I just want to go to the movies.”

Well, the big deal isn’t the $8 movie ticket. It’s the fact that you need $16 for popcorn and soda, and you have to get there and back safely.

It’s all these other things that aren’t obvious at first pass.

Slowing down, pausing, and using the Does It Make Sense Score Calculator helps you be aware of all components of a purchase.

When kids are aware, they make great decisions.

Tony:
So do adults.

For everybody watching and listening, Karen’s organization, Gifting Sense, is a nonprofit, so the calculator is free to use. There will be links to it in the show notes so you can check out the DIMS Calculator for yourself.

Before we start to wrap up, Karen, what tends to surprise students and families the most when they work through the DIMS Calculator?

Karen:
That kids choose not to spend.

They stop themselves.

That’s a big surprise.

It also surprises people that it isn’t about deprivation. It really is about putting a plan in place so that you have purchasing power for something that really means a lot to you.

Parents are often surprised, and maybe a little frustrated, that this mindful spending tool is really just asking the questions they want to ask. But when they ask them, they land differently.

They end up in an argument. When the questions are on the screen, it feels more benign or neutral, and the kids just go through and answer them.

Then you get to have a relaxed, productive conversation.

Tony:
There is so much around communication.

Our words are only a very small percentage of the communication we give. When you’re talking to your kids about these things, you have all these nonverbal factors, and the history of every conversation you’ve had with your kid about money.

All those things come into play. It’s not just about the thing.

That is the value of a tool like DIMS. The kid is able to engage fully, without all these other outside factors weighing in.

Karen:
I think so.

Acquiring this habit early in life closes the financial literacy gap upstream of other interventions.

Right now, we have a lot of systems in place to help people dig out of a pitfall. Why not create circumstances that allow people to avoid getting into the pitfall in the first place?

It’s so much easier to avoid it than to dig out.

If you learn early to pause, gather information, and reflect before you make a decision, you have a much easier time avoiding typical pitfalls.

The reason they’re called pitfalls is because they’re typical, not because they’re atypical.

Tony:
That is wonderful. I love that: it is easier to avoid something than to dig yourself out.

Karen, to wrap up, I have what I call the Get Ready Hot Take Trio. These are three quick questions I ask all of my guests.

The first one is: what’s one myth about spending money that you’re trying to break?

Karen:
That mindful spending is about not getting.

It’s not about not getting. It’s about ensuring you are able to buy what will really improve your life and make you happy.

It’s not about deprivation.

Plan beats no plan every single time.

Planned spending helps you get what you really want.

Tony:
Get what you really want. I’m just making a note.

That is powerful. This is not a negative tool. This is a positive tool so you can get the most value from your money.

You don’t have to have a scarcity mindset. Sometimes there is a finite amount of money available to spend, and spending wisely allows you to have more money to save, invest, and use for what actually matters.

Karen, let’s get out the time machine.

If you could go back in time, knowing what you know now about spending, what advice would you give your younger self, long before DIMS?

Karen:
This is every grown woman to their mother.

My mother was not mean, and she was not cheap. She was whip smart.

Honestly, I know it’s cliché, but it was such a gift.

My sister and I can stretch a dollar like nobody’s business. One girlfriend said we could medal in dollar stretching, and she said, “I’m not talking silver or bronze.”

It’s because we practiced from grade eight forward.

Even to this day, it sometimes drives my husband and son crazy because it does not bother me at all to go shopping and come home empty-handed.

I know I’m building the list of features that really mean something to me and the price point I’m comfortable with.

When I see the thing I’ve been looking for and I know it’s going to do what I need it to do, I have no problem waving it in.

But it doesn’t bother me at all to come home empty-handed.

That’s a skill, and it’s developed over time.

Tony:
I love that: take your time before making a purchase.

Sometimes that waiting period helps you realize you don’t really want something.

With impulse purchases at the grocery store, there are things near the checkout counter you may want to buy, but if you wait an hour or a day, you may realize you don’t really want it at all.

My wife does something similar. She’ll put things in an online shopping cart and then go back a couple of days later. Sometimes she’s waiting to see if they’ll go on sale or if there will be a coupon. But the other thing is she’ll ask, “Do I really want that or not?”

That’s a great skill.

Karen, to close out, what’s your number one tip to change the way we think about money?

Karen:
Ask, “Does it make sense?” Not, “Can I afford it?”

Start with, “Does it make sense?”

Because if it makes sense, chances are you’re going to find a way to afford it.

Sometimes it takes a long time to afford what we want, but it is a lot easier to forego other purchases so you can afford what you want when you are very clear on what it is you need to fill a need.

Tony:
I love that.

Make sure you’re asking the right question. In this case, the right question is: does it make sense? Not just the affordability question.

That is a big part of money and life: knowing the right question to ask.

Karen:
I don’t want to dismiss that some families are living with real scarcity. That question might strike them as a luxury.

But there are many families along the continuum where starting with that question might take some pressure off.

That is what parents and educators tell us all the time: this tool really does take pressure off kids and families.

That makes us happy because we’re trying to give them a life skill so they know financial confidence is within their reach.

Tony:
For the adults listening, this works for you too.

Karen and I have talked about this. The DIMS Calculator was created for kids, but if you’re thinking about going to a ball game, it works the same way.

For example, if I go to a Giants game, I have to buy the ticket, buy a ferry ticket, and then I’m probably going to want something to eat when I get to the game. If I take my son, he’s probably going to want a souvenir.

We can end up spending two or three times the price of the ticket.

Karen:
That’s a big epiphany for kids: the total cost of an event can easily be three times the ticket. That is a mic-drop moment for them.

The other mic-drop moment is the environmental impact of mindful spending.

We poll kids at the beginning of every workshop and ask them if they’ve ever received a holiday or birthday gift that wasn’t quite what they were hoping for.

What do you think the answer is, Tony?

Tony:
Oh, yes.

Karen:
Ninety-three percent of kids we’ve surveyed over nearly 11 years have answered yes to that question.

If we reduce that number by just 10%, so we go from 93% of kids getting one holiday or birthday gift a year they don’t use or appreciate to 83%, that is 56 fewer NFL football fields covered in garbage.

We did the math carefully.

That is a mic-drop slide for kids.

We are often told that this is what they bring home around the supper table. “Would you believe?”

So many toys and small gadgets have an incredibly long half-life, and they have a carbon footprint, which we define as the amount of energy required to produce and deliver something.

You are not giving up anything you actually use and appreciate. You are only giving up stuff you didn’t use or appreciate.

By default, you lower your carbon footprint and reduce the number of items you put in a landfill in your lifetime.

You might say, “It’s one T-shirt, one set of shoelaces, one board game.”

There are 60 million school-aged children in Canada and the U.S. alone. It adds up.

Cooperation is humanity’s superpower. If we all do our part, we can make a difference.

Tony:
If we all do our part, we can make a difference. I think that’s a great place to close.

Karen, where can people learn more about you and Gifting Sense? And most importantly, where can they check out the Does It Make Sense Calculator?

Karen:
It’s very easy. It’s Gifting Sense, G-I-F-T-I-N-G-S-E-N-S-E. It’s a word play, so it’s “brain sense” instead of “money sense.”

The website is giftingsense.org.

We’re truly permissionless. No registration, no login, no paywall.

Type Gifting Sense into any browser with access to the internet, and we’ll pop right up.

Tony:
Fantastic.

For everybody watching and listening, there will be links in the show notes.

Karen, thanks again for coming back on Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

Karen:
My pleasure, Tony.

Tony:
Thank you, everyone, as always, for tuning in to this episode of Get Ready: Before Life Happens.

If this episode helped you change the way you think about spending, please be sure to subscribe and share it with a friend.

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