3 Financial Lessons to Teach Your Kids From Home
Your kids are no doubt noticing the changes in the world, and maybe your family’s own financial situation, because of COVID-19 — as well as your reaction.
Here’s your chance to empower your children with lessons for their future.
We all grow up with different views and relationships to money (our “money story”) due in large part to how we were raised. Well, I feel fortunate that my money story revolved around having two generations of financial planners (my grandfather and father) as role models.
This learning — and a yearning to be like my elders — made me proactive in trying to build the sort of financial peace of mind we all seek. While learning the ins and outs of what my dad did day-to-day was interesting, far more impactful was the openness about money, opportunity, and our family’s finances that my sister Gabby and I experienced growing up under my parents’ roof.
Three Financial Lesson's To Teach Your Kids At Home:
- ·Appreciate the value of a dollar. Your kids don’t need to know the interest rate on your mortgage or your monthly credit card bill! But include them in conversations relevant to the family. The more open, honest, and clear you are about what things cost and how you choose to spend your money, the more comfortable your kids will become with the concept of financial prioritizing: separating needs from wants.
- Teach the power of starting to save while young. Educating your kids on the power of saving money young, combined with a basic understanding about the 8th wonder of the world — compound interest — can set the stage for everything that follows. A great exercise: would you rather have five million dollars today or a penny today that doubles every day for a month? Walk them through the experiment… but let them figure out the magic takeaway on their own.
- Let them enjoy the fruits of their labor. As your kids enter high school and start earning their own money (we can hope!), let them figure out their own sense of value & self-worth. Was buying that video game worth those nine hours that Jake spent working at the coffee shop? Maybe it was; if so, great! And what a great sense of accomplishment for your kids to enjoy something that they earned for themselves! As kids mature, they need to learn how to strike their own balance (using the money they’ve actually earned) between saving for the future and enjoying life. It’s the start to a balance sheet that will carry them throughout life.
Want to learn more financial tips to own your future? Check out my book, How to Avoid HENRY Syndrome!