Raising Entrepreneurs

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In a recent survey, the number one reason given by parents who don’t discuss money with their kids is “children have no business knowing that”.

Now, I can see an argument in favour of waiting until kids reach a certain age to teach them some topics. Sex education springs to mind immediately. Obviously, you don’t want to try to teach kids about sex and romance at too young an age - not only would it be potentially disturbing to the kids, but they actually can’t grasp the idea at all until they reach a certain level of maturity.

You could express it as a bit of a rule of thumb - the time to teach kids all about something is immediately before the first time they are likely to think of using it.

Now, the topic of money is just as charged and difficult in some families as the topic of sex. Parents don’t know how to discuss it between themselves, let alone in age-appropriate language with their kids.

Problem is, unlike sexual transactions, which under normal circumstances don’t start for kids at least until puberty, financial transactions are part and parcel of life from the time they are tall enough to wave their coins over the edge of the supermarket checkout and buy their first candy.

When is the right time to start formal discussions about earning and managing money?

At the moment, we regularly hear of grown women in their 40s and 50s, on becoming widowed or divorced, confronting a complete knowledge void when it comes to managing money.

I don’t advocate teaching 12-year olds how to do mortgage wraps and no-money-down property deals, but there is definitely a middle ground in there somewhere - a middle ground that not enough parents can find.

Regardless of the age or gender of your children, your goal is to prepare them for life - prepare them in such a way that they can take care of themselves even if you aren’t around, and even if they don’t have a romantic partner.

Make a list of the financial topics you deal with each month or each year - earning money, budgeting, saving, investing, giving to charity, insurance, consumer credit, and so on. It gets quite large!

But if you gradually work your way through discussing the items on the list as the issues arise in daily life, you’ll probably find you can cover all the topics without undue strain.