Building a financial education foundation for your kids begins at home. 

Take a quick moment to think of the many financial mistakes that you have made. Our question for you is this: would you like for your child to go through those similar mistakes? We’ve all made some costly mistakes when it comes to money, be it fundamentals such as not developing healthy saving habits, impulse buying or more costly ones such as investment mistakes or falling for scams. If you take a trip down memory lane and begin to reflect on the reasons why we made all those financial mistakes, most if not all of us would arrive at the conclusion: “No one taught me about finances!”, and that conclusion would be true!

Most of us would have gone through the earlier half of our lives without any finance-related learning. School syllabuses today only provide financial education at the academic level – teaching business, economics and accounting. But when it comes to personal finance, we fall short even when it comes to practical skills such as budgeting. As a result, when we enter into society as a young adult, we basically enter into a financial battlefield unarmed, stumbling and failing, and learning costly lessons as we go.

Here are some reasons why we believe home is the best place for financial literacy to begin.

1. Home Is Where The Habits Are

We all develop our earliest and longest-lasting habits at home. Whether it is the way we squeeze toothpaste or the way we relate with money, these are habits that are developed young and at home from our parents.

The key to financial success is based around healthy financial habits. Talk to any financially-successful person and you’ll find out that they are able to make smart money-decisions because they have smart money habits. Healthy habits that last a life time are not easy to build, they are set on strong foundations that takes years to lay down, this simply means that for these habits to be built, the best place to begin is at home and at an early age where parents still hold great influence over a child’s learning a development.

2. Safe and Sound

There is no better place to practice making mistakes than your home. To a child, a home is a literal safety net, a safe place where they can explore and new possibilities before entering the world beyond. This safety applies to financial literacy as well!

Take the example of simple movement, a child goes through the process of learning to walk with all the challenges and hurt of falling. It is however because they were able to practice all this in the safety of home, they can then take on every other physical challenge they wish to outside of home. Personal finance can have a similar experience where children experience financial pitfalls at home such as over-spending, not saving, insufficient funds, before growing financially-prepared to take on the real-world!

3. Who Is My Favorite Teacher?

Mommy and Daddy of course! Parents make ideal teachers simply because children tend to look to them as their first role models and therefore source of learning and development, so why not let them learn healthy money habits from you!

As a teacher, I can testify that most children at an early age will already have two of the most important qualities for learning: curiosity and questioning. Children will ask questions about any and everything they come across. As a parent, if you are able to direct this desire for learning towards finances by simply providing them with resources to, you will have no problem instilling financial awareness and building financial habits in them.

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