Teaching Kids to be Financially Independent

Sylvia Bowden copyright 2010

How can we train our children up for the big wide world, to love them, and then let them go? How can we stop them making silly financial mistakes and end up broke?

Only birth, death and taxes are a certainty in this life on earth, so nothing you do can have a perfectly predictable outcome. Why is this? Because people have a free choice to choose how they live their lives when they are adults. As a life coach and counselor I have seen the negative effects on young adults when Parents refuse to realize their children are now young adults, and need to be recognized as such and made to be responsible for themselves. A functioning healthy adult takes full financial, physical and emotional responsibility for himself or herself. Your children will always be your children but they will not always BE children and it is important to learn the difference.

Yvonne Godfrey creator of www.miomo.co.nz  (making it on my own) which is a fantastic course to help teens transition into a successful adult life has identified that many young adults do not have the skills to live independently from their Parents, because they have been spoon fed. She has identified 7 key areas to be a successful adult.

Discover personal values and strengths

Learn to set and achieve goals

Take responsibility to create pride, ownership, and contribution

Make decisions and solve problems

Master Money

Build Healthy Relationships

Communicate Clearly, Honestly and Effectively

Take each of these 7 key areas and look at how you are encouraging your child to move from being dependent to independent. Ask yourself the question “Am I encouraging my child to ……..” for each of the seven headings above so that they learn to live life independently from me.

Take the area – Am I encouraging my child to “master money?”. If you are unsure how to do this my husband and I found that at around 13 years old we gave our children an allowance which we paid monthly.

We sat down and worked out everything we spent on our children such as fast food, movies, clothes, outings, money for them to buy gifts for us and relations for Christmas and Birthday gifts and giving to charity over a year and then divided by 12. They both thought they were going to be so rich. However, when one of them spent nearly their whole monthly allowance on one clothing item they were very sad when they didn’t have enough money when their group of friends were going to the movies. It was very hard to see them staying home. It was very hard for us as Parents resisting the temptation to rescue.

So Parents, are you training your children to leave home and live independently? Do they know how to cook, clean, set goals, problem solve and manage their finances? Do they know what is involved in renting a place or flatting and some of the joys and pitfalls? The department of building and housing has excellent information on its website under the heading “flatting 101”. Or are you not training them in life skills and so when they eventually do go out into the big wide world they fall flat on their face?

Here are some ideas to talk with your child about.

Show them your latest power bill, not just the amount owing. Go through it line by line, explaining things such as customer number, daily fixed charge, cost per kilowatt and prompt payment discount. Work out a set of questions to ask different power companies to ascertain if your family is getting the best deal. Then encourage older children to phone different power companies to compare prices. On your list make sure the ask if the price they are quoting is connected to having a contract for a certain period of time.

Show your children your phone bill and discuss how much each call is costing. You can then also use it as an opportunity to talk about how you can reduce your phone costs. Again it might be a chance to get your children calling different phone providers to compare prices.

Talk with your child about some good or bad financial decisions you have made, such as an investment or asset purchase that gained value and did really well (or not so well).

The main thing is to start including your children in the general financial life of your family so they can start to learn about the “real world” in a safe environment.

Sylvia’s book, Parents: How To Stop Your Kids From Going Broke is available from www.silbo.co.nz , Paper Plus Stores, and Christian Bookshops. Sylvia is also a speaker and trainer who is available to speak with businesses and community groups on how to become financially savvy in 8 easy steps.

Filed under: Uncategorized