Yesterday my friend asked me if I ever posted about kids and money and if I ever though about this matter. We talk about the role parents play in developing their children’s attitude to money, both in their childhood, when they are financially supported by their parents, and in their adult life when they make money themselves. Though we agreed that it is important to help our children to understand major money concepts and let them discover all money related stuff, age question turned out to be very disputable.

Obviously, I decided to look into this matter. Here is the list of helpful tips I discovered when making my research:

1) Start from teaching your children how to spend and manage money rather than save them. Give your children some money and encourage them to spend them on pleasant and fun things they want but taking into account their own longer-term goals and necessity to donate some.

2) Children like games and competitions. So make some game which will develop money saving and investing skills.

3) Avoid saying “yes” and “now” when shopping. Do your best to explain to your child that if you buy this or that thing today, you will lack money for something more important next day (especially if it concerns something your child is always very excited about). This is a very good approach which helps your children to feel the differences between needs, wants, and wishes.

4) When teaching your children about money, you should not forget about such important aspects as earning money and borrowing money. If you have any loans, you can allow you children to participate in managing family budget and avoiding late payments. To explain your children that money should be earned, you can consider paying them for helping you with some chores.

5) No matter which age you consider to be the best for your children to start learning money concepts, you are to focus on goals by age.

Do you help your children to discover money concepts? Do you use any approaches to teach your children about money? How your parents influenced your attitude to money?

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