Learning to save begins at home
Since schools are not equipped to teach children about money, parents must lead by example
Everyone believes kids should learn about money: how it works and how to manage it.
But loads of folks seem to think it’s someone else’s job.
Money lessons should be taught at school. Borrowing should be taught by lenders. Banking should be taught by, well, bankers.
The federal government even appointed a task force to work on a national strategy for financial literacy.
I have to tell you, when that report came out more four years ago, I was so not impressed that I yawned. Once again, everyone wanted to put the responsibility for teaching kids about money onto someone else’s plate.
Don’t even get me started on how ill-equipped schools are to do this.
But school boards no doubt spent thousands of dollars to design curriculum, forcing teachers to squeeze the lessons into an already crowded curriculum.
(By the way, do you think your kids have gotten smarter about money in the past four years?)
The best place for kids to learn about how money works — and the role it should play in their lives — is at home.
Since money is a hot topic and most parents are scared to death to even broach the subject with their kids, let’s look at another “life lesson” that is taught at school but learned at home.
When kids are introduced to the food pyramid at school, they learn all about which foods are healthiest and how much of each kind of food they should include in their diets. But telling kids to eat five to seven servings of fruits and veggies each day has little impact if, when they get home, mommy and daddy serve up a hotdog, a bag of chips and can of pop.
Out the window goes the lesson just learned and kids come to know that the stuff they’re taught at school is irrelevant to their lives.
So it is with money. We can talk about how important it is to save until we’re blue in the face, but if our kids don’t see us saving at home, they won’t learn that lesson. We can talk about becoming smart consumers, but if we whip out our credit cards every time something takes our fancy — or worse because our kids demand it — we’re teaching them to embrace their Impulse Monkey.
We can talk about how important it is to save but if our kids don’t see us saving at home, they won’t learn that lesson
Growing up in a financially sound home doesn’t automatically translate into success for kids, either. Children don’t learn about money by osmosis. They need to be taught the rules of good money management.
They need lots of practice to incorporate those lessons into their lives. They need to be able to fail safely and adjust their thinking as they learn about how money works. And there’s a lot to learn, so we should start early.
Want to teach your children to be financially successful? Want them to avoid living from paycheque to paycheque? Want them to steer clear of crippling student loans and credit card debt?
Time to take the reins of your child’s financial education.
And if you have to do some learning (and make some changes) to make this work for your children, is that really such a bad thing? Gail Vaz-Oxlade writes every Tuesday for Smart Money.