Money is a thorny subject for parents to tackle with their children, leaving some to virtually ignore it from a parenting perspective. Yet, our attitudes about money make everlasting impressions on our children.
Even if you perceive your own relationship with money to be healthy, it is a big responsibility to teach your child sound financial values. Even harder if you recognize that your own relationship with money is out of whack.
This series will help you to guide your child down the road toward a healthy financial outlook that is rich will gratitude and generosity. Subscribe here to get started.
The foundation to a healthy relationship with money is achieved with some thoughtful language and modeling. Below are seven good points to keep in mind:
- When it comes to teaching kids about money, sooner is better.
- Teach your kids that people can spend, save, and give away their money.
- Teach them that money achieves necessities (food and shelter) and goals (traveling, philanthropy, etc).
- Introduce the idea that people have different priorities for their money. Make a point to discuss your priorities with your child. Help them to create their own priorities.
- Be mindful of your word choices. Rather than saying, “I have to go to work now.” Say, “I get to go to work now. I work so that we can have money to buy food or visit grandma and grandpa or so that you can go to school.”
- Homeless people or those less fortunate will inevitably be a topic of concern for your child. How will you address this?
- Give your child money so he can gain experience with it. I’ll talk much more about how to do this in an upcoming post. But just a word of warning – when you give your child the opportunity to have some money to spend, remember that there will be “mistakes”. Better to experience mistakes on a small scale when he’s young. This way he can learn the importance of making good choices with money before the stakes go up.
Future posts will look at the art of giving and receiving as well as the importance of allowance for kids. Stay tuned, because you might be surprised by the post on allowances. If you’d like to follow this series, subscribe here and the posts will arrive in your email inbox.
Related post:
- Top Rated Gift for Every Child
- Raising a Financially Intelligent Kid
- The Do-Gooder’s Guide to Raising Generous Kids
I always find it funny watching friends who I knew as kinds. It seems pretty obvious I know but the ones who had stingy parents turn out to be the same and the ones who had parnets who threw money around tend to do the same themselves when they are older!
I agree with all your points, in order for kids to truly understand the idea of money management, they need to have a little to start with first, which will usually come from a grown up.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on my series on, Teaching Kids About Money. If you have anything to add, please feel free to leave me feedback.
Thanks!