This week my girls had Spring Break, so I’ve been enjoying hanging out with them. They are now 8 and 10 years old. I can remember when they were just toddlers and I started talking to them about money. It seems like yesterday. š The one thing I do know is those conversations have made a huge difference in all of our lives.
This week I shared with you the first step to becoming financially literate is setting goals. It seems almost too easy and simple but achieving what you want, begins with knowing what you want. Even a financially responsible person will struggle to make good money decisions when they don’t know what they are working towards.
I also debunked another popular myth or common reason for not teaching kids about money. You don’t need to be financially literate to start teaching kids about money. You can learn together! It can be scary sharing your money skeletons with your kids, but you do them a greater disservice by letting that be your excuse for not talking to them about money. Being prepared to make smart decisions with how we use our money is key to our long-term financial well-being. I can’t tell you how many times people tell them they wish their parents would have talked to them about money, including sharing their money mistakes.
Instead of my usual weekly round-up this week, I decided to share a great infographic on financial literacy. What I found particularly interesting was how many parents gave schools an F in financial literacy. That itself wasn’t particularly shocking as financial education isn’t widely taught at most schools, but I am curious as to how they would grade themselves when it comes to teaching their children about money.
This infographic includes a small financial literacy quiz to test your knowledge. If you’d like to see how you compare to high school seniors who took the 2006 JumpStart Financial Literacy Quiz, you can take it here. See if you can their beat their average score of 53%. š
I would like to see financial education taught in school because I believe it’s as an important topic as reading, writing and arithmetic. With that being said, I also don’t believe the sole responsibility of teaching kids about money belongs to schools either. What do you think? What should schools teach? What should parents teach?
The Heavy Purse Store is now open! My new downloadable Money Club Workbooks are now on sale. Each workbook provides five targeted lessons to help you raise Financially Confident Kids. Please check them out in The Heavy Purse Store.
SHANNON RYAN, CFPĀ®
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