|Teaching children about money
Include children in your
Most children and teens don't know what their parents do to earn
money. Sure dad may be an engineer and mom may work in IT, but what
does that really mean? What do they do all day? Once children learn
what adults do in different jobs, they become more invested. Take
your children to your office and let them see where you work, who
you work with and what you do all day.
Let them participate every once in a while in your
business ventures. If you sell antiques as a hobby to earn extra
income, let them play a role. There's always some way that children
can help, regardless of their age. Even preschoolers can help with
easy office work such as organizing business receipts.
"Their involvement needs to be age appropriate," Langemeier
says. The activities should also be appropriate for the children's
comprehension level. But when they get to know how you earn the
money, they begin to have a greater understanding of the bigger
Most people learn best when they experience something firsthand.
Children and teens are no different. To learn good money-management
skills, offer real world lessons. For example, if the family is
considering buying a new car, let your daughter look up the trade-in
value. Sit down as a family and discuss the options you'd like to
have. Suggest that your son go to three different car dealerships
to get quotes on two different types of cars with the options the
family has agreed are worthwhile.
One exercise Baker has his students do is count the
number of spare "doughnut" tires on cars they see over the course
of one weekend. He explains that when there's a "doughnut"
tire on someone's car it can only mean two things: Either the driver
just had a flat tire and is on his way to have it repaired, or the
flat occurred some time ago and the driver doesn't have $50 to get
it fixed. Baker says it's usually the latter.
The point of the activity is that it gives the students
the opportunity to see how many people can't afford to handle the
If the driver had an emergency fund, something that
Baker suggests his students have in addition to savings, then he
or she could afford to have the tire repaired. The students love
this type of activity because it's something they can relate to
and see for themselves.
"If you make it
interesting to them, they're more likely to learn and enjoy learning," Baker says.