I have two young daughters. As personal finance advocates, my wife and I consciously find teachable moments to our kids for them to learn about money. We don’t always do it right but when we do, we know we are making an investment on their financial future.
Here are 10 ways we teach them about money:
We let them play with coins and bills.
Currency of exchange is a theoretical concept and physical coins and bills are the concrete representations. So before they can understand the concept, we let them touch and play with coins and paper bills and show how these are used to buy stuff.
We explain to them where money comes from.
The first time I took each of my daughters to an ATM machine, they were so amazed that cash just came out by pressing a few buttons – like it was magic! I had to explain in the simplest terms how we make money, and then put the money in the bank, so we could get our money from the bank’s machine.
We ask them to line up and pay for purchases.
Whether it’s getting ice cream from McDonald’s (okay this is not good parenting) or buying a toy at Toys ‘R Us, we make our daughters line up and pay at the checkout counter. This gives them not only an understanding of commerce but also gives them the confidence and skills in placing orders, giving payments, claiming goods, and counting change.
We bring them to the bank.
As much as possible, we bring our daughters to the bank when making deposits, paying bills, or withdrawing cash. We usually sit them on the teller’s counter (when they were smaller) so they can see how things work. It gives them a clear picture what a bank is for and why we go to the bank. Plus, they love to run around the branch.
We link money with hard work.
The times we have to be out the whole day or ask for some peace and quiet at home (we often work from home), we explain that we need to work hard so we can earn money. And we use money to buy the things they need and want, like books, food, clothes, and toys.
We let them choose.
Our daughters know they cannot buy or spend for anything they want. They are learning that life is about making choices and that money is finite and therefore they need to prioritize what is more important. When we’re at the toy store, we give them a budget and they can choose what they want based on what they can afford. (Actually, more often than not, we just let them play and they rarely nag us to buy something.)
We make them wait.
I am little guilty of acquiescing to my daughter’s requests but her mom does a better job of teaching delayed gratification. So when they want something at the grocery or sees something from a commercial that they want to buy, we tell them to wait. Kids being whimsical, they often forget they want something.
We give rewards – and gifts.
Sometimes we give our daughters a toy or ice cream to reward a particularly and exemplary good behavior (otherwise most of their good behavior is expected, not paid for) or an accomplishment. And sometimes we just give a gift or pasalubong without preconditions but just out of affection. So they know that when they do something more than what is expected of then, they can get rewarded, and that sometimes they get something just because we love them as our daughters.
We look for free alternatives.
The good things in life are often free (or cheap). So our kids know they can have as much fun playing with cardboard boxes and home-made kites as fancy electronic toys. Even with electronic games, they know they can only download free books and games, which they enjoy already. But they also know that if it’s worth paying for, e.g. educational games like Minecraft, we are willing to pay for it.
We teach them to have a gratitude attitude.
When they complain about their food or whine about being bored, we tell them to be thankful with what they have (and sometimes pull out a guilt trip about street kids and starving children in Africa – who knew we’d say the same things as our own parents?). We also model gratitude by praying together as a family and thanking God for all His blessings (we enumerate them so they know every good thing is from the Lord).
Photo by Fabian Blank on Unsplash
