To raise financially savvy kids, give money lessons a reboot

Many elder millennials may have learned to manage money much like our parents did: waiting for statements to arrive in the mail, balancing checkbooks and paying in cash. But if you’re planning to impart the same lessons to your own children, ask yourself a few questions first.

Is this still how you deal with your finances? How often do you carry cash anymore? Do you even know where your checkbook is? If the respective answers are “no,” “rarely” and “maybe in that box I never unpacked since moving six months ago,” then the money lessons of the ‘90s aren’t going to cut it for the next generation.

The way we handle money had already been changing dramatically, but the pandemic accelerated those changes. One example: A September 2020 American Express study found that since the COVID-19 outbreak began, 70% of merchants had customers request contactless payment options, and 73% of merchants prefer customers to pay with a card or app instead of cash.

So trade in those old-school money lectures for a primer on plastic and digital payments. By the time your kids become financially independent, they may thank you for it.

Begin credit lessons at a young age

Because cash is tactile, it provides a natural way to introduce younger kids to money. But according to Gregg Murset — founder and CEO of the BusyKid app, which teaches kids about money management — you don’t need to stick to coin counting for long. “I think kids are very smart these days, and they can learn that a quarter equals 0.25 in like five minutes,” he says.