Parents and Money – Setting an Example
Photo by Ian Koh licensed under Creative Commons
Young recently posted an entry asking those who have children (or plan to have them), how they intend to help their children learn about finances. Early Retirement Extreme gave some good common sense advice in the comments.
Very easy. Set a good example. Children will mostly imitate their parents unless the parents are completely unreasonable in which case the kids will eventually do the opposite of their parents. If nothing else, I think keeping financial matters hidden from children is a bad idea.
While this is excellent advice, I think there’s an aspect of being a good example that’s often overlooked. Even if you’re “being a good example” in the sense of doing sensible things with money, unless you make a point of actively including your children, it’s often invisible to them.
For instance, even though my parents helped me figure out finances in some ways, in most they just left me to fend for myself, assuming that I had observed what they had been doing over the years. The problem was that since finances weren’t at all interesting to me as a child/teen, even if they’d been balancing the checkbook right in front of me, I would immediately tune it out.
It seems to me that being a good example is much more than just doing the right thing when the kids are around. It also means actively showing them what it is you’re doing. What do you think?