News Releases

CALGARY, ALBERTA--(Marketwire - June 7, 2012) -

Editors Note: There are two photos associated with this press release.

BMO Bank of Montreal, the official bank of the Calgary Stampede for the past 100 years, joins in the Centennial celebrations throughout the Calgary area and offers Family Financial Tips, to encourage parents to teach their children early about the basics of money management.

BMO Family Financial Tip # 2 - Life lessons for Kids from Family Garage Sales

BMO SmartSteps for Parents provides access to leading experts, including parenting expert, Alyson Schafer. With garage sale season underway, Alyson offers a few tips to use this age-old tradition to create wonderful family memories, get your house in order and teach your children some important life and financial lessons.

Put your kids in charge - Ask your children if they'd like to have their own table at the family garage sale. Explain that they can keep all the money they make from selling their own old toys and clothes. They can learn a great deal from this arrangement.

Handling money - Pricing items, handling money and making change will help your kids learn addition and subtraction and get more familiar with the various denominations and their value. Depending on age and skill level, you may need to offer some supervision and support.

Negotiating skills - Children can handle price negotiations with customers who may want to barter. Bartering is fun for many, and can be made to feel like a game. It demonstrates to children how flexible pricing can be. This could plant the seed for a lifelong love of savings if they learn to ask for deals, or get a discount for being a "preferred customer."

Pricing - Now is the time to teach that sometimes sticker prices are inflated to allow for bartering. You can discuss pricing tactics, like pricing an item at $4.99 because it seems like a lower price than $5 to buyers. Two for one and buy-one-get-one-free are other classic marketing methods your kids can try first-hand.

Keep up the momentum - After the garage sale, you and your child can take the unsold items to a local charity or a shelter.

Parents and kids are invited to mosey on down to meet Alyson Schafer. Alyson will be on hand at the BMO Kids' Zone for BMO Kids' Day on Wednesday, July 11 to talk with parents and children about the value of instilling responsible money management skills at an early age. This year's BMO Kids' Zone will once again feature Loonies 'n Lasso's, a life size board game that quizzes participants, in a fun way, on money management. There are prizes for all who participate and a chance for kids to make their own creative tile for a large mosaic.

To view the photos associated with this press release, please visit the following links:

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20120606-HitchthoseBucksPosterlg.jpg

Image # 1 - Historic BMO Ad for Calgary Stampede

"Hitch those bucks to the B of M" advertisement as it appeared in the souvenir programme of the 1958 Calgary Stampede. The Bank of Montreal branch in the Stampede's Administration Building offered money orders, drafts, cashing of travellers cheques, currency exchange, safekeeping of cash and deposits from the proceeds of sales.

http://www.marketwire.com/library/20120607-Alyson_S.jpg

Image # 2 – Photo of Alyson Schafer

Alyson Schafer, parenting expert, whoops it up at the 2011 BMO Kids' Day during the Calgary Stampede.

About BMO Financial Group

BMO Financial Group is proud to be the official bank of the Calgary Stampede for the past 100 years. That's why we're corralling the community to celebrate with us at our special events - the BMO Farm Family Awards and BMO Kids' Day.

Established in 1817 as Bank of Montreal, BMO Financial Group is a highly-diversified North American financial services organization. With total assets of $525 billion as at April 30, 2012, and more than 46,000 employees, BMO Financial Group provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and solutions.