There are many things that parents focus on teaching their children. Is financial literacy one of the subjects that you have thought of? I have thought of it but I assumed my children would be too young to understand. Now I don't think I should wait. If we are going to change the way money controls our world, we must change the way it controls our families.
Reading a blog from a mother who used to be in marketing (The Not Quite Crunch Parent), she stated that the focus is going to the younger and younger children. The corporations of the world are marketing toward preschoolers, toddlers and young children, this is nothing new. What IS fairly new is that they actually have an acronym for it KGOY (kids getting older younger). There are more adult oriented products (technology=$$$$$) toward our children.
Then I ready this article from Michelle Singletary of the Washington Post. An excerpt:
"Some of the most disturbing interviews in the movie came from two
mothers, Janne O'Donnell and Trisha Johnson. Both women lost children --
college
students -- who committed suicide largely because of credit card
debts.
O'Donnell's son had amassed a debt of $12,000 on 10 credit
cards. Johnson's
daughter was a freshman when she spread her credit card
bills on her bed and
then hanged herself. She owed $2,500. You can't watch
these women tell their
story and not be outraged."
Teaching Children Money Habits For Life They are a place to start.
After reading that article, I am starting today.
10 comments:
I'm positive it's never too young to get into good money habits.
I had absolutely no financial training from my parents. I had to learn it all the hard way. Luckily I never got more than a couple thousand in credit card debt, but that was bad enough. Now I am very savvy, thank goodness.
And those poor kids and mothers -- good grief -- that is a true tragedy.
It's definitely something we have talked about. We also learned the hard way, and it's something we know we want to be able to teach to our kids. My parents had good intentions, but by bailing me out whenever I screwed up and was broke in college I didn't really learn much about budgeting.
I was listening to talk radio and this was the discussion/when to start teaching sound financial advise.
One call--and I think this is kinda odd but valid reasoning-- makes her kid pay 40% tax on his allowance!!!! get him used to the idea perhaps. :)
The credit card companies are very slick in their advertising to young adults - seeing it now with our 17 year old. Yikes.
All I have to say is read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". David read it and LOVED it! It's a story about these two Dad's, one was financially rich and the other was financially poor (or so the kids thought). It talks about how schools and society in general do not teach our children things such as finances. There's a lot more to the story, but that's the jist of it. Anyway, check it out.
Never really thought about it like this. Thank you for making us aware.
Thanks for the link! Actually, I'm still in marketing- I just choose carefully which projects I take on. Parents today, IMHO, have bigger challenges teaching money management to kids as this is a much more commercial society, and one that accepts massive amounts of debt as the norm. The challenge, particularly for those of us who try to severely limit our kids exposure to commercialism, is to ensure that they still become sophisticated consumers.
Any chance you caught 60 minutes this week. There was a great piece on the financial state of our nation that made me think, we are all screwed.
We have had the discussion about money, and are coming closer. I agree and I am going to start early. I had troubles with credit cards in college and luckily I was able to speak with my parents about it and they helped, but I learned a hard lesson.
Thanks for sharing this. I am going to forward that article to my husband. It is good to discuss this.
I love that link to Teaching Children Money Habits for Life. I'm printing that out now and plan to link to it on my blog. Great stuff! Thanks.
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