Imagine working your whole life to create generational wealth and having that lost because the younger generation have little to no understanding of money management. It is important therefore that as you work to invest and grow your family’s wealth, you also dedicate same level of commitment to financial literacy training for the young ones.
“It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep,
how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.”
– Robert Kiyosaki
Familiarization about money should start at very young age as a study by University Of Cambridge show that children’s money habits are set by age 7. These conversations provide long term benefits for current and future generations. See honest family conversations on money. Emphasis for these conversations is that they need to start when the children are young: as young as pre-school, and evolve as the family members grow in number and in age.
Teaching preschoolers’ money may be challenging especially when you think of their level of concentration but surprisingly enough is not a hard sell and you might just have fun (probably find it equally as fun as the preschooler). A few tips on how to introduce financial literacy your preschooler:
1. Make it Short: – take into consideration their attention span when planning money lessons. The general rule of thumb is that a child’s attention span is considered to be 2-3 times their age. Financial literacy for children should therefore be given in small doses for impact.
2. Make it simple: – easy to understand and relate. Complex explanations and concepts tend to scare children and you do not want them to have the foundation that everything about money is complex.
3. Make it fun: – it is easy to remember fun things that very serious stuff. Using fun stories and play mechanisms to explain different concepts makes it enjoyable and most importantly memorable.
4. Make it interactive: – making financial literacy interactive and practical makes it easy for children to find it relatable, engaging and to also hold their attention.
5. Make it repetitive: – Remember children learn through observing and repeating what they have observed. It could be going through the same fun activity or reading a fun story about money over and over again. Research indicates that children are more likely to recall and retain vocabulary when they hear them in the same story multiple times.
Once children figure out that money is easy to understand and fun to learn about, then their inquisitive nature becomes an internal force that propels the quest to learning more about money as they grow older. Be the positive influence in your child’s money story.
