How do YOU Measure up as your Child’s Finance Teacher?

Alicia Nelson-Bell, HCHC
Empowering Financial Wellness Program Coordinator

It can be hard to feel like you are doing “enough” to teach your kids especially when it comes to money. In a T. Rowe Price survey, almost 60% of parents said they were having money conversations with their kids once a month or less. These same parents also ranked money as being one of the top 5 most uncomfortable topics to talk about with their kids. Further, only 26% of parents surveyed felt schools were doing a good job teaching kids about money. And opinions and perspectives about money from the media are all over the place so it’s really up to you to proactively teach your children positive money management skills.

Where do you start to teach your kids the financial principles that will stick with them through the rest of their lives? We have a couple of free resources! Read on!

Teaching Kids Money Management
FREE Download
This free download has lots of great resources to help you know what to be teaching your kids at different ages and tips to help you be successful. There are lots of mini lessons that help give ideas for bringing up finances in day to day conversations, tips about allowances and a couple of quizzes to gauge how things are going.
Going along with our 2022 Finance Calendar, this month we want to invite you to do one of the quizze! The “Teaching Children Money Habits for Life: How Are You Doing?” quiz will help you see areas where you are doing well at having money conversations and teaching your kids about financial principles. On the other hand, this quiz can give you some ideas of conversations you can have or ways you can bring money up with your kids and do even better going forward. Remember that you don’t have to sit your kids down and have a formal lesson about money every day or week, but that there are lots of casual ways you can bring up financial principles.
 
How to Start the Money Conversation
Free Download
Now if you’ve stuck with me this far and you’re still wondering how to make money conversations more positive and regular, we have another free downloadable resource to help you out. This resource asks questions to help you reflect on your money history, evaluate your money habits and attitudes (side note: if you'd like to find out your money personality, sign up for the PowerPay Money Master online course to take the Money Habitudes quiz) and can help you put a financial vision board together.
 
Have fun talking about money with your kids. Don’t make it a stressful or pressured situation. You do not have to be an expert to teach and talk about money.  Include your kids in family experiences that involve money (which happen all around us). Remember that with money in particular, more is caught than taught, meaning that your example is going to be crucial in the experiences they have with money growing up.