15
Mar
These Top Three Tips Will Help Set Your Kids Up For Financial Success
When we were growing up, financial literacy was often a mixed bag throughout our peer groups. Through the last couple years, we’ve all collectively seen plenty who have successfully weathered the storm in addition to unfortunate stories of financial situations gone awry.
With things beginning to settle back into a more normal path forward and our paychecks being able to finally cover more than just our mandatory bills, it’s time to consider the easy-to-learn financial tips we can help teach our children to truly set them up for future success.
These tips, in addition to your experience over the prior two years, will ensure your children have the tools and knowledge they need to succeed on their own, and most importantly if a situation like this ever arises again.
Going Through Flyers Together
This is a fun and engaging activity, especially for younger children. Having them write down the foods they often see in your cupboards will help them understand why having a grocery list is important, and then going through the flyers together will provide them with a huge boost to their math skills. Seeing big, easy-to-read numbers and identifying the prices ($2.99 compared to $3.99) helps create the foundation for keeping their own grocery bills down far later in life.
Acting As Their First Creditor
This is a great introduction for older kids to understand how borrowing money really works. As their first creditor, you can offer to lend them money for a one time purchase, and set the rules on payment as you see fit (weekly payment, monthly payment, whether you choose to add interest, etc). Failure to repay on time results in comments of noticeable lack of financial trust, and how it could affect their standing in the real world. If they fail to repay completely, you have the ability to remove any future possibility of borrowing money. Good behaviour, however, can be rewarded in a similar manner to credit card reward points (lunch, movie, etc) when the final payment is made.
Playing Board Games
Enjoy family game night with a resource-based game like Monopoly or Settlers of Catan. While the money and resources might not be real, the concepts behind them certainly are. Monopoly can be enjoyed by kids of all ages, while Settlers of Catan should be geared towards older kids – and it’s absolutely loved by adults!
Financial literacy is important, and it’s never too late to begin or even get a refresher course.
You are an expert in your field, we are an expert in ours. Keenans Accounting Service can help provide all of the financial accounting that you and your family need to grow. Give us a call at 705-526-7628 to arrange a consultation by phone or via Zoom meeting. Contactless, secure document dropoff and pickup are available at our offices in Downtown Midland.