Kids and Cash

In this week’s Family Friday we conclude our week long focus on the “Money Crunch”. The second message of a two part series on finances comes this Sunday.

When my children receive birthday cards from their grandparents, aunts, and uncles there is often a small check or a few dollars in the card. It is fun to watch how children of different ages handle the money. Infants quickly dispose of the card and the money and chew on the envelope. Toddlers love to tear things. If you’re not there to help, the card and the money don’t make it through the day. Pausing over the card to read it and appreciate the sentiments being expressed becomes a tradition in many homes. That is, until our children discover that money can buy them stuff. At that point, the envelope, the card, and the poetic verse are forgotten for the money in the middle. It’s at this time in the child development trajectory that it occurs to a parent, ‘somebody needs to bring some financial counseling into this picture’.

Here are a few thoughts to help you teach your children about money.

• Teach your children that everything belongs to God, including our money. God gives us money to manage in ways that please and honor Him. Sure, we can use it for our needs and even some wants, but God has also given it for the advance of His Kingdom.

• We are not automatically entitled to money just because we exist. Avoid creating an entitled allowance for your children which separates their responsibility to work. Instead, help them from an early age to work for others. Even grade school children can earn money for weeding a flower bed, walking a dog, or washing a car.

• When your children do earn money, teach them three important principles. First, that the first ten percent belongs to God as a tithe. Second, teach them the value of saving money for long term expenses (like even college or marriage, but certainly for more near term things like vacations). And teach them the responsibility to contribute to the family. For example, Christmas and birthday giving is much more meaningful if our kids are giving gifts from their own money or creativity.

• Require permission to make purchases. When your children ask you if they can buy things, consider give them alternatives so that they learn the value of money and the need for wisdom. If they say, ‘dad can I buy an I Pod?’ take a few minutes to show them what that same $100 would become if they saved it. Or show them what they may have to do without if they purchase the IPod (or the skateboard, or the gynormas Lego set).

• Invite them into your finances. Let them see you write the first check – the tithe off the top to the church. Show them just how much money it takes each month to pay for heat, electric, and food. Show them how much is left over after all the bills are paid. It all helps them to see that, “money doesn’t grow on trees.”

At each stage of our children’s development, new lessons about money are needed as our kids’ awareness of stuff to spend on grows. We want to teach them so that the responsibility of money and its benefits always go hand in hand.