Should We Start Teaching Our Children About MONEY?

There are a lot of things we wish, we had learnt back when were young; like how to delegate our homework in school or how not to get caught cheating in an exam. Wouldn’t school life be much easier with these skills and not to mention, these skills would come in handy in as an adult too, maybe.

Silly stuff and shortcuts aside, there are in fact few things in life, which we do regret not learning in early stages of life; like the importance of finance and wealth. The whole concept of building, growing and managing personal finance, is so wrongly portrayed and conveyed in our generation, that our kids as well have not quite understood the crux of money.

Finance doesn’t just mean savings and investment. It begins with the understanding of money from its roots; how is it made, how much is spent vs how much do we need to spend, how to prioritize expenses and how to earn stability of income and to grow it.

Let’s take an example of a 10 year old kid who is allowed a pocket money of Rs.100 only in a month, to spend on anything he likes. On the 7^th day of the month, the kid has bought himself a 50 rupees toy and a 50 rupees coloring book. The kid is happy because all he ever wanted in the first week of allowance fits his pocket money exactly. However, there are still 3 weeks left and the kid might still need new pens at the end of week 3. There is no one who has taught him the significance of prioritization, the basic difference between a need and a want and even is unaware of the concepts of savings and provisions.

Forget school life, even our teen life in college would have been much better, if we were taught these basic things about money. Our career decisions could have shaped better, if we had some fundamentals of how money works.

Recent studies say that children cultivate habits at as early age as 7 years old. They subconsciously imprint things they saw their parents doing and repeat the same, while growing up. If we are imparting morals and knowledge when kids barely know the difference between right and wrong, why are we not imparting the knowledge of wealth. Sure the kid doesn’t have to know how share market works, but why can’t they learn where money comes from and how is it utilized.

Schools being the primary mode of teaching anything to a student would be the best place to kick-start this. If schools were to include financial literacy in their extra-curricular along with other activities like sports, music, dancing etc,, our next generation is sure to become wiser and smarter than us, who not only can do their own taxes but can also make good decisions in investments of personal finance

I know what are we all thinking, isn’t a 7 year old kid anyway leading a very hectic school life, with numerous subjects, several extra-curricular activities? However, what we fail to see is that this  is not merely an activity or a subject to learn to pass an exam, but is a necessary life skill which each one of us needs in life, because surviving isn’t just enough, we need our upcoming generations to thrive. They need to learn the perspective of best out of waste and a difference between being a miser and being just resourceful.

There are lots of different innovative and creative ways schools can acquaint the children about these basic concepts of finance. With the right set of faculties or partners, a subject like financial literacy can also become as interesting as learning dancing or painting, We hope going forward; we will see schools actively engaging their kids in the concepts of financial literacy.

In the mean time, if you have any questions or want to understand more about the importance of Financial Literacy for the kids aged between 7-14 years, reach out to us at: https://finstart.in/contact-us/