How To Teach Your Children About Money

Hooray!

It’s May 27th and it is National Children’s Day.

Growing up as kids, we looked forward to May 27th because the day connotes fun and exciting activities.

I have some advice for you on how to make it today. Teach your children about money.

No, they are not too young to learn about money. A study by the University of Cambridge has it that children develop most of their money habits long before the age of 7.

And more often than not, they tend to grow into adulthood with the money habits they’ve formed at this age, modifying them once in a while through interactions with their peers. And believe it or not, most of those times, the information they pick up on their own or from their peers would be wrong.

As a parent, one of the greatest things you will do for your son or daughter is to guide them into figuring out what money is and how it works. This is because money will continue to play an important role throughout their life.

So what better time to teach them than now?

To help you in teaching your children about money, I will be sharing with you a few tips or approaches you can adopt. I must point out that teaching your children about money is not just a one day, one-off thing but something you have to continue doing, even into their adulthood.

Start From The Beginning

O yes, the beginning. Teach your children what money is and why it is important to have money.

Teach Them How Money Is Earned

Before you move on to show your children how to spend money, it is important to teach them how it is earned. Let them understand that it takes earning money to have money. And when one hasn’t earned, he or she can’t have money to spend.

To help drive home the point to them, find a way to show them how to earn. If you have a shop or a business, you can take them to your office and let them watch you make a sale.

One of the ways my parents taught me how to earn money was to expose me to their business at a very young age. Long before I turned 17, I was already being left in charge on many occasions.

Also, you can encourage them to earn by paying them little amounts of money for being able to do their chores well or for any other good behaviour they put up.

Teach Them To Save

The next important thing about the money you need to reach your children is how to save. You can get them piggy banks and encourage them to put away money in them to save.

It may not fully make sense to them why they should put away money as savings when they could just spend it. So as a way of encouraging them, help them set a target on what to buy with the money from their savings.

When they get older, help them open up a savings account in the bank and encourage them to save into it from time to time.

Teach Them How To Spend Money

Help your children to understand how to spend money. When next you go to the grocery store, take them along with you and let them be the ones to make the payment.

Connect this lesson to the other lessons on earning. Help them understand that it is only when one has earned that he or she can spend.

Teach Them How To Make Budgets And Financial Plan

Help your children understand what a budget is and why it is important to have a financial plan.

One of the ways you can do this is by having them draw up a list of the things they need for school and how much it costs.

When they save, encourage them to keep track of their savings in a notebook.

Concluding Thoughts

It is not too early to teach your children about money. The above are some of the ways you could get started today. In teaching them, make them understand why it is important to learn about money. Helping them understand the importance will help make the lessons stay with them. Children love to know the reason for everything.