Serving Bread

Last week, I began a set of reflections about some of the ways I am trying to teach my children to have sound financial values.

Principle #1: Model what we teach

Principle #2: Money has a value

I know many adults who do not realize that money has a value. Checking account balances and credit limits are numbers that don’t really have any sort of sway on a person’s living standards. I don’t think I know of any young children who know that money has a value and is earned. When my kids ask to do an activity or they want some candy or a toy, they don’t know the value of this commodity.

My children barely know that my wife and I have work and that our work rewards us with a paycheck that goes to pay for many expenses. We are just on the cusp of recognizing that this is an important principle to teach my children. Because of that, we don’t have too many great ideas on how we are doing this. For one, we are trying to teach them that many things have finite limits. For example, they have to go through their day negotiating when to watch TV because they are only allotted certain number of minutes of TV viewing. They negotiate what dessert they can have after their dinner and what kind of snack they can have for the week.

All of these are non-monetary ways we are trying to teach our children that life is about negotiating decisions, and as we begin instilling that value with money, we hope that would understand that they have to negotiate their finances and often make the tough decision to say yes to the cookies and no to the candy.