Today is Guest Blogger Day for all of our May Blogathon-ers. I’m over at This Dame Cooks today, if you want to read my post. I blogged about one of my favorite family gathering/potluck dishes.

I’m happy to introduce  my guest blogger, Leah Ingram. Thank you for your great post, Leah!

This past Mother’s Day I wrote a posting on my Suddenly Frugal blog dedicated to my mother and the frugal lessons she taught me when I was growing up. But it got me thinking: what kind of frugal lessons did I hope I was passing on to my daughters? Granted, they’re only 11 and 13 right now, so I’ve still got plenty of time to teach them the importance of being smart with their money. But here are the four frugal lessons I hope they have taken to heart.

You Can Wear Clothes More Than Once. In my mind you can wear a pair of pants or a shirt until it is either visibly stained or noticeably smelly. I’d like to think that my kids feel the same, though I have plucked many a still-clean pair of jeans from the bathroom hamper and put them back in their dresser when no one was watching. Soon enough I know they’ll realize that it takes a lot of time, energy and effort to wash clothes (just wait until they’re out on their own) and so going for as long as you can in between loads of laundry is ideal.

Budgeting Is Key to Making Your Money Last. I’m so glad that my husband and I decided two years ago to begin giving our daughters their allowance monthly. This automatically forced them to figure out how to make their money last longer and made them rethink how they shopped—especially since my husband and I also decided that from here on in, the kids were responsible for buying themselves all non-essentials.

Buying New Isn’t Always the Best Option. Suddenly last year my younger daughter became label conscious. Brand names, especially on clothes, took on a new meaning, and seemingly overnight she wanted to wear the same maker clothes that all the kids at school were wearing. But she had a problem. Mommy and Daddy were no longer footing the clothing bill (see Lesson 2 above), and my daughter couldn’t afford brand-new, brand name clothing in those dimly lit stores with loud music. Thankfully, we introduced our daughters to the concept of consignment, resale and thrift store shopping, where they discovered they could indulge their desires for certain label clothing, albeit used, and not use up their entire allowance in the process.

Swapping and Borrowing Can Stretch a Dollar. In our pre-frugal life, we never balked at buying our daughters books to read. I mean, if there was one indulgence we shouldn’t feel guilty about, it would be buying books, right? Well it turned out to be wrong, especially after we reviewed our annual spending on books one year and discovered how much cash we were laying out in bookstores. So we reintroduced our daughters to the concept of the library, and suggested that if they wanted to read a book badly, they could borrow it from the library. We also explained that if they got lazy and forgot to return the book or, heaven forbid, lost the book, they would be responsible for the late fines. In addition to using the library again, my daughters got creative and began swapping books, DVDs and clothes with friends. These days they are well read and well dressed with nary a dime spent in the process.

Leah Ingram is founder of the Suddenly Frugal blog (www.suddenlyfrugal.com) and author of the soon-to-be-released book Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and Healthier on Less (Adams Media, 201), a book that promises to save a family up to $25,000 in a year.

Tags: children, daughters, family, frugal living, guest blogger, kids, mom, parenting, saving money, suddenly frugal