Here is a quote from the philosopher, Confucius: "If your plan is for one year, plant rice. If your plan is for ten years, plant trees. If your plan is for a lifetime, educate children."
What a great point from a smart teacher! For the future generation to have adequate money management skills, we need to educate our children now. For tomorrow's leaders to govern with effective financial knowledge, we need to educate our children today. For that to happen, parents need to step up and be good role models!
By passing on to our children not only the knowledge but also the mentality and attitude of financial responsibility, we can prepare a more solid foundation of financial literacy for them. Here is a quick exercise for you to try with your kids to assess how financially responsible they are:
For each day in the next week, give your children $10. Tell them that they can do whatever they want to with that money. Your job is to observe their behaviour and their actions. At the end of the week, have a review session together for them to talk about their thoughts, to share with you any temptations that they encountered and to describe how they spent the money. Based on this quick exercise, you can assess how responsible and literate your child is when it comes to money management. This will be the best $70 you have ever invested!
