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How to Educate Your Kids About Money

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By mp2admin RCM Blog May 20, 2017

Money is taboo and is something not to be discussed. People don’t like discussing how much they make, not even to their kids.  Parents will talk all day long about the birds and the bees, doing homework and chores, but not how to responsibly handle their money.

Proper financial education includes a variety of aspects from budgeting to planning, earning and saving.

To that point ask a kid how much a car cost and they’ll have no idea, nor do they know how much certain jobs will make them – which makes an emphasis on doing well in school that much more relevant. On top of that, most people don’t learn about financial literacy in school. Why is that? Our children are set up to fail before they’re even adults.

Teens believe that as adults they will earn an average salary of $145,000. In reality, adults with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $54,756 in 2011.

I taught a group of middle school kids about the need to build credit and at the end they were able to correctly answer how many credit cards the perfect credit profile has, yet most adults can’t.

Successful parents want their kids to be well-adjusted and advantaged, but they don’t want them to lack ambition – Make sure they understand what it took to make that money, the hustle, the drive, the education, the years of work and that it will take that same effort for them to keep the money and build on it for their kids

For allowances, deposit into an online account that they can access and see.  That way they can determine if they have enough money for a toy, game, etc. and if it’s really worth it.  Better than them asking you for money constantly.  A pre-loaded card also works.

Consider giving kids 3 buckets to save into:

  1. Short-term spending
  2. Big ticket items
  3. A charitable fund (ex., saving the environment)

Below are some resources for games and activities.

Resources: