How to educate financially!

Educating is not an easy task and we can not only reduce to academic issues. The education that you give your child has the family and personal luggage, involving world views, values, beliefs and other factors.

Different from those years when the financial education was the subject only for adults and a taboo theme among families, today families are introducing it to their children. Some factors as the globalization and the consumerism led to a transformation of man's relationship with money.

Before questioning yourself how to teach them about money, finance or consumerism, a good strategy is to teach the child to take care and value their things, as toys, clothes or even the family life. The literacy phase is a good time to begin the process of teaching them to manage their own money. At this stage they begin to acquire the notions of quantity, numbers, belonging, at the same time that mathematical operations and language are well understood.

Play with the child showing that everything has a price, whether material values or not. Don’t worry with numbers, but with the concept, for example, expensive or cheap; high or low. A good strategy is going to the supermarket with the child. Make a list with items she wants and carry coins and change. Show how much the goods she desirescost and how much she has.

Young children have difficulty with temporal issues. In this way do not set very long deadlines during financial education. Monthly allowance is most effective with 12-year-olds, whereas younger children assimilate and deal best with weekly allowances.

As the child develops the relationship with the money we’ll change. So the parents must pay attention and talk with them about this relationship that the child are developing and the importance of this for their life.  

See you next time,

Laura

SOURCE: MONTEIRO, E. A culpa é da mãe: reflexões e confissões acerca da maternidade. Editora Summus: São Paulo, 2012