A few months ago I wrote about Doughmain.com, and how their online tool can help parents organize and track allowances and related chores for their children.

As a follow-up to yesterday's post about teaching financial lessons, here are a few tips for other summer activities by Ken Damato, the founder of that website:

1. Create a family match plan for savings — To encourage smart saving habits and help your child build savings, create a matched family savings plan, similar to a 401K you have at work. You, as parents, act as the company and match your kid’s savings contributions. Also discuss how the money they have saved throughout the summer will allow them to continue to do fun things throughout the year or prepare for their future.

My friend’s daughter was born in the summer, often a tough time for an elementary-aged kid who wants to celebrate with her friends. As we talked about seasonal plans, my friend mentioned how her daughter was asking for a second American Girl doll, and how she was torn about what to do. In her mind, she was weighing the price tag against the guilt over the fact that many of her daughter’s friends wouldn’t be around for birthday festivities.

My friend’s angst is common among mothers of young girls who clutch their wallets around birthdays and holidays in anticipation of the request for these $100 dolls. There’s no question the dolls are well made. It’s just after the abuse you watch your child put their Barbies through, you can’t help but want some solid guarantees that these pricier playthings will do a better job of surviving the endless grooming, wardrobe changes and intricate imaginary adventures.

My own daughter has had an endless fascination with dolls from the time she was 2, so I knew early on my budget would be in trouble. When she entered kindergarten and discovered American Girl, I borrowed from another mom’s playbook the idea of having to earn the privilege of owning the doll. The pricetag was steep in the eyes of my then beginning reader: she would have to prove to me that she could read an entire “chapter book” before we could go to the store.

The assignment had the desired effect: she learned the concept of value, and made an admirable effort at taking special care of her playmate. But it didn’t quench her appetite for more. At Christmas a year later, the request for a second doll was made to my mother, who happily went shopping despite my protests. But when the request for a third came down the pike during the spring of her 8th birthday, I stood firm and banned her from the store. “Absolutely not,” I told her. “No one needs that many.”

At what age do you plan to retire? According to a recent Gallup poll, the expectation of the average American is that it’s going to be around age 67, a significant increase from the mid 90s, when most people assumed age 60.

It’s no surprise that the shift in expectations resulted from the recent shocks to the economy, including the recession, the financial crisis, the housing bust and stock market volatility. There are also rising concerns about the long-term viability of Social Security and Medicare.

I was invited to attend a play at Somerville High School yesterday called, "Money Matters." Produced by the Underground Railway Theater, the theater-in-residence at Central Square Theater in Cambridge, the production was written by its 16 youth members as part of a Cambridge Savings Bank-sponsored financial education initiative.

The young actors and actresses took part in CSB’s Smart Financial Education Program to help them understand some money managing basics, and then went out and interviewed at least 80 individuals of various ages, ethnicities and professions to get their thoughts on key money issues.

The students took actual quotes from the interviews and wove them together into a series of conversations that talked about everything from spending one’s paycheck every week ("I love the feeling of having made a purchase, but I hate the feeling of having no money ...") to the fiscal inequities that people sometimes face when they go to college. ("Economic diversity is something that I have to learn to live with … I’m at college and I care about community, but where does caring about community end?")

The storylines were linked together by one central character – the tooth fairy – who was prompting the conversations by engaging in a “tooth fairy stimulus package.” Each character received $100 per tooth and then the tooth fairy watched their responses and actions to having the money.

Why the tooth fairy? According to the organizers it was because across the board, people who were interviewed said that their first memory of dealing with money was when the tooth fairy paid them a visit. The tooth fairy was also apparently the cause of a lot of discussion about money and equity since many people had different opinions, and experiences, about the value of a tooth.

While the play was interesting, what really caught my attention was the Q&A period after. The kids in the audience needed a little prompting to talk about the topics brought forward, but it was interesting to hear what had made an impression on them. One student said that she had never really understood the difference between a debit and a credit card, and the impact that interest can have on one’s budget.

“The world of credit is a mysterious world to kids of this age,” said Evan Diamond, an assistant vice president and Financial Education Program Manager for Cambridge Savings Bank. “They need to understand that every time you get a credit card you are taking out a loan. Showing them how much interest you will pay if you fall into the trap of minimum payments is a real wake up call.”

Several other students said they were struck by a monologue about a student who went to Haiti and learned the meaning of money for survival’s sake as opposed to just pure spending.

“We try to connect the emotions with the action” through the community program, Diamond said.

CSB started its Smart Financial Education Program in 2010 in response to the financial crisis, Diamond said. The bank has a team of educators who visit schools as well as a variety of community centers to provide an overview on a core curriculum of four modules: Budgeting and Saving; Managing a Checking Account; Credit Smarts; Fraud Smarts. They also customize their classes to fit a particular area, for example they might discuss finance to students interested in entrepreneurship and business, or they might discuss interest rates and mathematics concepts in a math class.

The team has taught more than 300 sessions, reaching 4,6000 participants at high schools in towns including Lexington, Arlington, Belmont and Concord, as well as non-profit groups such as the Community Learning Center in Cambridge and the Somerville Homeless Coalition. This spring they’ll be reaching out to kindergartners at a variety of schools in order to encourage kids to think about saving starting at a young age. Diamond emphasized that the group does not provide promotional materials on CSB at these events since “we don’t do this to sell accounts.”

“Managing money is tricky,” Diamond said. “It’s nice to be able to give them good advice.

“Here we go again.”

It’s that kind of skepticism that Bankrate.com financial analyst Greg McBride said might undermine the economy as consumers once again grapple with high gas prices -- and the ripple effect that has on household incomes. With salaries generally not keeping pace with rising expenses, people’s spending power is being squeezed, undermining their confidence in an economic turnaround.

Consumer spending is critical to the recovery since it powers 70 percent of economic growth, McBride said. This month’s Bankrate.com Financial Security Index dipped down after posting some gains at the end of last year, illustrating the insecurity that the more than 1,000 Americans polled felt about their debt, net worth, job security, savings and overall financial situation.

A recent study by the investment management company Vanguard Group found that almost one in four 401(k) participants are investing in only target-date funds, a six-fold gain over the past five years. The increase reflects a growing number of new participants: Vanguard said that of those employees entering a retirement program for the first time, 64 percent opted to invest in a single target-date fund.

Target-date funds are a type of mutual fund that allows investors to set a date for the life of the fund. As retirement approaches, the fund shifts its emphasis from more aggressive investments to more conservative ones based on the target date.

Many companies are choosing target-date funds as a default investment option, and automatically enroll eligible employees into them if an individual doesn’t voice a preference. In general, Vanguard said that the move to target-date funds illustrates how there is growing reliance on “professionally managed accounts” in which a fund manager or third-party advisor makes portfolio allocation and rebalancing decisions on investors’ behalf.

As a follow up to my post yesterday, I received this infographic from DoughMain.com that illustrates some of the key statistics they uncovered from a survey conducted last month to learn more about how kids are interacting with money in their daily lives.

I call my six-year-old son my little capitalist because he is always trying to volunteer the many different ways that he can make a buck. When he was four, his eyes lit up when I explained (in preschool language) the concept of interest and why that justified depositing his collection of coins in the savings account. He is more than happy to count our soda cans, and calculate the number of nickels he should receive, as long as he gets to keep the full amount. And he cheerfully does any number of tasks around the house for a small bribe.

Now he wants an allowance. I have three rules about a weekly arrangement: First, my kids must be fluent in identifying the different coins, etc. and in counting change. Second, they must have demonstrated, over an extended period of time, an ability to keep track of any dollars and cents they have in their possession, either by responsibly storing them in a wallet or in a piggy bank. Third, they must complete a set of chores each week.

Divvying up household responsibilities between my older son and daughter sometimes becomes a chore in and of itself. I want the tasks to advance with their age and abilities – and they want to see a relative rise in allowance amounts as their responsibilities increase.

So I found myself once again in search of a tool to help me organize this new family assignment. As I shopped for kid birthday gifts and the like at stores, I would look over the various charts and calendars I could hang on my kitchen bulletin board. As cute as they were, I didn’t see myself maintaining the system. Not to mention I had already promised myself to try to reduce paper.

So back to the online tools I went. And in doing a search, I came across the site DoughMain.com.

Fidelity Investments today announced a new iPad App that allows investors to make a mobile deposit directly into their Fidelity IRA accounts. Investors can take a picture of a check with their iPad camera and immediately send it to Fidelity for deposit into a traditional or Roth IRA.

When it comes to making dinner, Thursdays are the bane of my existence. After a long week of work and juggling kids’ schedules, usually by that day I’m starting to look to the weekend and the chance to relax for a few minutes. The last thing I want to do is think about what to cook.