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When it comes to passing on lessons to your children, most people think about manners, temperance and sensibility take priority. Not many of us consider it important to teach a young teenager about money matters in depth, or to begin a structured approach to gifting them a monetary mindset.
While this might seem like overkill from a young age, it can be very helpful for their development. We often keep habits we are taught from a young age. If you were ‘forced’ to make your bed upon waking as a child, it’s likely you’ll keep that habit for the rest of your life.
If you were brought up in a clean and tidy household, you are much more likely to value organization and tidiness in your living area as an adult. By this logic then, teaching our children from a young age about money, making them comfortable with it and feeling responsible for it, can help them make great financial decisions early on.
We’ve collected some fantastic tips to teach your children from a young age, and examples you can use to relay this information in an understandable way.
Money Is Dynamic
The ‘hoard’ mentality can harm someone over cautious with their budgeting. Sometimes purchasing quality over quantity is important, so long as it’s coupled with a sense of temperance and patience. Depending on the age of your child, you might illustrate this by taking them around two separate toy or video game stores.
In order to gain the best video game released that week, suggest they sell two of their older games, or that this will be their only game you buy them for a period of months. Show them that money is dynamic, and it’s okay to spend. But also back that up with foresight, and a budgeting timeline. Demonstrating this with a product they are interested in receiving will teach them the value of financial compromise, despite money being healthily spent.
Every Dollar Has Value
Of course, the value of one dollar is, well, one dollar. However, teaching your children every dollar has value is important. Teaching them every dollar has value could be illustrated by incentivising their chores. If you allow your child to wash your car for $15 every week, consider adding a bonus $5 if they vacuum the internal seats and carpets. This shows them how effort translates into money, and how sometimes it’s worth applying effort to gain more and becoming more secure. One other way to best exemplify this is to teach by osmosis. If you have debts yourself, the child will often figure this out – especially if you’re stressed about it often. Using debtconsolidation.loans and showing them a surface, illustrative only budget to show what percentage of your income is being applied to a singular debt payment, they will see that careful financial planning and always counting the dollars to the minutiae of their accounting prowess has benefit.
With these tips, your child should hopefully be introduced to financial planning, temperance and a healthy attitude to spending. As they move into the world and gain their freedom through work or college, they are much more likely to make sensible purchasing decisions.
