Click below to listen to Episode 159 – Teaching Kids Good Money Habits
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Teaching Kids Good Money Habits
We delve into simple ways to help your kids learn about financial responsibility and create good money habits.
Teaching kids good money habits doesn’t have to begin when they are teenagers, it can start as young as 4 or 5! It all begins with educating your children on 3 simple areas when it comes to finances:
- Give
- Save
- Spend
By breaking down finances into these 3 areas, it allows even the youngest of children to have a better idea of how to manage their money properly at a young age. Throughout this podcast episode, Bob and Shawn delve into the ways of incorporating good money habits into your kids’ lives. Not only are these basic concepts a great introduction for children to establish financial responsibility, but it can also be an excellent beginning point for those who have never incorporated good money habits into their lives before.
HOSTED BY: Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
CO-HOST: Shawn Peters
Mentioned In This Episode
Christian Financial Advisors
Bob Barber, CWS®, CKA®
Shawn Peters
Bible Verses In This Episode
PSALM 24:1
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
2 CORINTHIANS 9:7
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
MATTHEW 25:14-30
Parable Of The Talents
PROVERBS 13:11
Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Welcome to Christian Financial Perspectives, where you’re invited to gain insight, wisdom, and knowledge about how Christians integrate their faith, life, and finances with a biblical worldview. Here’s your Christian Financial advisors host, Bob Barber and his co-host, Shawn Peters.
Shawn:
Welcome back to another episode of Christian Financial Perspectives. Thank you so much for joining us. Whether you’re currently listening to one of the many podcast options, or you are watching us on YouTube, we’re so glad that you’ve tuned in today. We have a topic for teaching kids good money habits, and if you like these kinds of videos and topics where we cover financial issues, but from a Christian perspective, we’d love for you to hit that subscribe button so you’ll know whenever we post a new episode and it also helps the algorithm so other people just like yourself who enjoy this content will hopefully find it as well. And today is gonna be kind of fun because I have two young kids, four and one. Bob has already raised three kids that are now adults. And so, we’re gonna be coming at this from the perspective of someone who’s already raised the kids and tried to instill good money habits. And I am looking at how I’m gonna do this myself.
Bob:
Shawn, I would say, my kids are really good with these money habits and especially…
Shawn:
You’ve got to see the fruits of your labor in this respect.
Bob:
I wanna say too, that so much of this I was taught though from Focus on the Family, back then it was Crown Ministries, a guy named Larry Burkett. So many of these principles he taught I remember even buying some of the… you can see here, we got the give, we’ve got the spend, and then we have the save. But we actually had a little bank and it looked like a bank and it had this written on it. And we started teaching Jenna, I mean, she was like four years old, five years old. We were already teaching. She’s like, what are you trying to you could tell, she’s like, what are you teaching me? But we taught this concept. It’s basically live, give, grow, like we’ve talked about. But it’s the saving part, and I think the saving part is really good from the perspective. Where’s the saving? Right here, the saving part, we would we would match them kinda like a 401k in their savings part.
Shawn:
That’s a cool idea.
Bob:
Well.
Shawn:
Well, before we get too much into that.
Bob:
Well, I know we’re gonna get into this because this is fun and I’m excited to go over this because I want to teach people how to teach not only their children, but the grandchildren good money habits. Because those good money habits will be used throughout their life.
Shawn:
That’s right. Okay, let’s go ahead and start with the scripture for today. We have Proverbs 22:6. This is from the King James version, “Train up a child in the way he should go. And when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Bob:
Don’t you love that? I’ve loved that scripture. That’s so encouraging, and those of you who have taught your children in those ways, and Dr. Dobson used to say, when you have the arrows, when you let go of the arrows, you’re not sure where it’s gonna go. And some of them, they’re not there yet.
Shawn:
Yeah.
Bob:
But you just gotta keep praying and they’ll come back because scripture’s true. And I believe scripture.
Shawn:
And just remember that while you’re training those children up in the way they should go, when they get to their teenage years, it’s not that they’re not listening, but there’s just, there’s a lot going on.
Bob:
I’m not, I don’t mean to laugh.
Shawn:
Bob, I heard something. I thought it was pretty funny. But I was talking one of the guys, another father at church and his kids are older. They’ve already moved out. And he made the comment, the reason why teenagers are always so rebellious is because God needs your teenagers to rebel so you have an incentive to kick them out of the house. So, they’ll go learn to be on their own because if they stayed your sweet young children, which obviously as I’m learning, they’re not always sweet, but in general, if they stayed those sweet children that loved you and always respected you…
Bob:
You just wouldn’t wanna let them go.
Shawn:
You wouldn’t wanna let them go. So, he said that’s God’s way of making sure that they get out of the nest.
Bob:
That’s the truth, isn’t it?
Shawn:
And then, with myself personally, I remember like, oh, my parents, they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Bob:
We better hurry.
Shawn:
I know. All I was gonna say, once I got to college and by the time I was done, I started realizing my parents had a lot of good points and maybe they were onto something. So with that, our first one today is teach and lead by example.
Bob:
Yes.
Shawn:
Your kids are watching you.
Bob:
That’s the truth.
Shawn:
And they’re seeing how you give, how you save, how you spend. And maybe not when they’re really young, but they do start to see how you invest as well, once they kind of understand the concept.
Bob:
Mine definitely did because they grew up in this business. And watching dad, and they even worked, I had them stuffing envelopes when they were five and six years old – using child labor. It just hurt them so bad.
Shawn:
It’s called training.
Bob:
Yeah, exactly. It was, it was training. I’m so proud of the way they’ve come out, with how they manage money. It’s really exciting. But it’s like saving, this was back in the old days where you didn’t set up the automatic draft outta your account for your giving and tithing. So, I would write a check and they would get it, get the opportunity to put the check in the offering. It was coming by. And then we taught them about giving, that giving is so important. But sometimes, they’d open up the check and their eyes would get real big. Wow. to them, that was a lot.
Shawn:
That’s more money than I’ve ever seen.
Bob:
But they’re watching that and they’re saying, okay, that’s the example. And that’s the kind of example as parents that we want to give our children is we really gotta teach and lead by example. This thing of, “Just do as” what is it? “Do as I say, don’t do as I do.”
Shawn:
Yeah.
Bob:
No. That doesn’t work.They’ve got, they’re watching everything you do and you want to be very careful, too, of spoiling a child and getting them into what I call an entitlement mentality. There’s a lot of that going around today. Don and I talked about this before, and Don is my age, and we have children about the same age in their late twenties, early thirties.
Shawn:
Don is one of our, just for those of you, Don’s one of our advisors. He was a CPA for about 20 years before he started working with us.
Bob:
That’s correct. And we were just talking about that, how a lot of what we did was all about entertainment and we did, we spoiled a generation and we have to be very careful about that and getting that generation into an entitlement mentality. So when you’re raising your children, you want to teach them this good money habit. So you want to teach them to give first. That’s scriptural. To save second and then spend, did you notice I didn’t say you’re not gonna, this doesn’t go first. You don’t spend first/
Shawn:
You give first.
Bob:
You give first because giving breaks the bondage of selfishness. Because our selfish nature, when we’re giving, we can’t be selfish. It takes that nature out. And then saving for the future, and there’s so many good scriptures that come with that.
Shawn:
Putting long-term needs ahead of short-term desires.
Bob:
Right. And then they are kids. So yeah. It’s okay to go spend and spend some stuff on. Well, back then we went for candy, we went for bubble gum or whatever.
Shawn:
The important stuff, the essentials.
Bob:
Exactly. Snd I think it’s important, too, to read them some scriptures about giving and saving. Some of the scriptures, y’all heard us mention many scriptures on Christian Financial Perspectives for years now, if you’ve been listening. But my favorite of course is Psalms 24:1, qnd when you teach your kids that, “The earth is the Lords and everything in it” that the dollars that they’re earning or that you’re giving them or for allowance or whatever that may be, it doesn’t belong to them or us. It’s God’s and we’re to honor that and be good stewards.
Shawn:
And it doesn’t matter if it’s $10, a hundred dollars or thousands of dollars. The principles are the same.
Bob:
They are, and they’re the same for us as adults.
Shawn:
Another great verse is 2 Corinthians 9:7 and that’s the one that talks about, “God loves a cheerful giver.” So that’s the other part in teaching your kids. The Bible says that it’s not just that you give because it belongs to the Lord, but that you should be cheerful and joyful in giving.
Bob:
Here’s the saving about Proverbs 13:11, “Saving little by little”, and consider the ant. And it even says you sluggard, it saves in the summer and stores up his provision. So, it’s saving little by little. And then we got this one, we’ve talked a lot about this one in past episodes about saving and investing.
Shawn:
No, you don’t have an investing one . You have giving and savings.
Bob:
But that’s the parable of the talents. Matthew 25, which is a great scripture. I shared that a lot with our children growing up about the parable of the talents and how they gave, God gave, or the master gave to each one according to what they knew they could handle.
Shawn:
Their ability. Could handle.
Bob:
That’s right. That’s correct.
Shawn:
All right. And I think for the investing part that’s really important is that two of the three servants did something well. Like, we don’t really know what they did, but they were able to make it grow. And then you have the last one who buried it in the ground and then he gets scolded for basically if you had just put it in the bank, you could have at least earned interest on it. I feel like that’s kind of the part of, it’s not just the savings like for emergency funds, things like that, but the investment part is a big part of it, too. Because otherwise, it’s doing nothing.
Bob:
I guess I should have had saving and down here written “and investing”.
Shawn:
Yeah, exactly.
Bob:
But I wasn’t thinking about the child investing yet.
Shawn:
Exactly. We’re not quite, it depends on the age.
Bob:
And so when you pay them and there are chores I don’t think that you should pay for. I mean, making your bed, keeping your room clean, helping with the dishes, cleaning up a after you you eat, and things like that should be expected. I don’t think you should pay a child for things that are just normal that they should do. But then there’s those outside things. And as Don and I were talking, we were talking about the outside jobs that we had as children. I remember lawn mowing at seven and eight years old, I could barely push the mower, but I was mowing our yard. And then I started mowing some neighbor’s yards. And I remember I got $5 per yard, for mowing the yard. It took me forever, and I thought I was gonna die because it was so hard. I couldn’t hardly push it. But it taught me the value. And I was making money outside of the home at that point. I remember our girls, they were babysitting. So have them…
Shawn:
I guess to summarize that, then Bob, what we’re saying is have them work for money but don’t pay them for the daily chores. So cleaning up their room, cleaning up after themselves, in the kitchen, folding their clothes, and putting them up. Those are just part of life kind of things that they need to learn responsibility and should not be expected to be paid for that. But you can let them earn an allowance or money for taking out the trash cans to the curb and bringing them back in or the recycling, depending on which day it is. The other thing would be, hey, go out and de weed the flower bed or the lawn, sweeping the porches off, washing the car. And those are things that it’s not really that they’re taking care of themselves, it’s that they’re kind of going outside of their responsibility realm and helping you with stuff that’s needed to be done. Like, that makes sense. You should pay them for that. And that way, they learn the difference between personal responsibility and actually working to earn money. Which kind of takes us into one of the other points that you had here, Bob,
Bob:
Is about paying them.
Shawn:
How you pay them. So pay them in $1 bills, all kinds of different denominations of coins, especially when they’re younger. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters. Because then you can help them learn extra math skills without having to use a calculator and knowing how to make change, for example. Like, it’s just good practice for them.
Bob:
It is. And when they go buy something, it is good to teach math where they’re giving them money back. So you say, okay, how much was that? That’s $1.72. Give them two $1 bills. How much should you get back now? 28 cents.
Shawn:
We haven’t gotten Rhonan, because he’s only four, I know we haven’t gotten him yet to the making the change, but we have started to have, give him money when he does certain things. Like he’s helping us around the house and helping us do stuff outside of his own clothes and whatnot. And so, we give him a little bit of money and he can go get a a little $1 Hot Wheels toy car or something like that. And he gets to give the cashier his money and get the car. He’s starting to understand that.
Bob:
It’s so cute when they’re giving that money to the cashier, you see them looking up and giving, and I remember watching my children do that, but they were understanding. Where if it’s just a debit card, if you’re putting money in the account and it’s a debit card, they really don’t understand that. But I think…
Shawn:
Here. I give them this card
Bob:
And they had the physical money and to pay them in the physical money and actually put dollar bills in here and change. And then they pull that out and they realize when they pull that out, now it’s not there anymore.
Shawn:
And that goes into our, I believe this is our last point, so helping them to create a small budget so they have the money that they’re gonna be giving to the church. They have their money that they’re saving. So maybe they’re losing that to save up for a game that they want or certain certain article of clothing. Or maybe they want to go to a movie that’s coming out soon.
Bob:
But it’s the more long term thing. Exactly.
Shawn:
A little bit longer term. And then they have the spend. Now again, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re spending it that day, but that is going to be something that’s a little more discretionary, you know? And so, helping them understand those budgeting techniques early,.
Bob:
Remember kind of the 10-10-80 rule I call it. 10% here. So outta that dollar 10% of giving, they’re gonna put a dime there. Savings, put a dime there. And then they’re gonna put 80 cents in the spend. So they still get to go spend, but that’s a good way of doing it. And a book I would recommend is, I don’t have this in our notes, Shawn, maybe you’ve never heard of it before, but it’s called “The Richest Man in Babylon”. And it’s a great, it’s an old, old book that my dad had me read two or three times, and it was about saving and how he saved for many, many, many years. But I would encourage you to get that old book, “The Richest Man in Babylon”, because it was all about being wise with what God’s given you. We wanna raise fiscally responsible children, and you want to be the example of you being fiscally responsible as well. So we hope we’ve given you some good tools today. I think it’s a hard subject to cover, actually. because many times we’re not doing it right ourselves.
Shawn:
But I think it’s a good practice because, like you said, maybe we’re not doing it ourselves. So if you’re wanting to try to teach your kids good financial principles…
Bob:
You wanna learn those.
Shawn:
Then you need to start acting them out in your own life.
Bob:
Maybe you just need to do this yourself right now.
Shawn:
Exactly. So, that’s gonna wrap it up for today. And if there’s any other topics that you guys would like to hear us cover, we’d love to hear from you in the comments. Or, you can also if you want to let us know or if you need advice, you can call or text us at (830) 609-6986 or you can visit our website, www.christianfinancialadvisors.com. We’d love to hear from you. God bless. And thank you for joining us.
[CONCLUSION]
That’s all for now.
We invite you to listen to all of our past episodes covering many financial topics from a Christian Perspective. To make sure you don’t miss any of Bob’s upcoming episodes you can subscribe to Christian Financial Perspectives on iTunes, Google Play Music, Spotify, or Stitcher. To learn more about integrating your faith with your finances, visit ciswealth.com or call 830-609-6986.
[DISCLOSURES]
Investment advisory services offered through Christian Investment Advisors Inc dba Christian Financial Advisors, a registered investment advisor registered with the SEC. Registration as an investment advisor does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Comments from today’s show are for informational purposes only and not to be considered investment advice or recommendations to buy or sell any company that may have been mentioned or discussed. The opinions expressed are solely those of the hosts, Bob Barber and Shawn Peters, and their guests. Bob and Shawn do not provide tax advice and encourage you to seek guidance from a tax professional. While Christian Financial Advisors believes the information to be accurate and reliable, we do not claim or have responsibility for its completeness, accuracy, or reliability.