Be Well: Teaching Kids to Become Financially Literate

<div class="block">Alvin Hall, author and financial educator, joined &#39;beWell&#39; to talk about financial literacy among children. Hall spoke to Cheddar News&#39; Shannon LaNier about how to introduce the topic of money to kids and when parents should start the talk. </div>

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Right. Parents here is another way to get involved with your Children. Start teaching them about money and you don't have to wait until they're older, start as soon as they reach kindergarten. But there are right things and wrong things you can do when you do it. Author and financial educator, Alvin Hall is here with the best ways to teach your kids how to save. Thank you so much for joining us and I'm glad to be here. Now you say that there are different stages that you should teach your Children about money. So what are these stages and what do we do with each of them? It's really important to recognize that teaching Children about money involves making it uh apply to their development, what stage they are in their development. So between about two and six, that's when they're learning to count money and they know that they will have more by putting it in the bank. So that's the first stage. My kids never wanna put it in the bank. I tell them, save it, save it, save it. They're like candy chips. That's because your Children are probably older than that and they're in the age, which is the concrete operative stage where they connect money and results. And that is a key period when you need to teach them really simple lessons. The first lesson is perhaps you want to give them an allowance, right? And when you give them an allowance, you, the adult must be firm about this because some Children will overspend, some Children will not. For example, a friend of mine has two sons. When she goes shopping, she always gives them a dollar one. Son, always overspends and ask her for more money. And what she learned was that the child didn't really think about money in a concrete way but always what they wanted. So giving a child an allowance also having the child open a savings account because at this point, they can see the money grow and you as a parent can help them do that by attaching uh their goal to something you will help them to saying, oh, if you reach so many dollars, I will give you so many dollars to help you reach your goals, to match it and that'll give them more incentive to want to save. Exactly. What do you do if you have that kid who's always over spending and they always want to ask you for more money, how can you get them to realize that that's not what we wanna go with this. You have to be firm and not worry that that child is going to fail. The child will at some point reflect and start to learn from the failures. Many Children say I don't want my child to fail. I don't want them to be unhappy, but it's better that they're unhappy with you where that you can control that and influence it more than have it take place out of your house because the world won't be as kind. And also remember at the same time, you're teaching them about saving. You're also teaching them about deferred gratification point number three, deferred gratification is really important as an adult because you know, you won't get everything you want at one time and it's ok, you wait for it and you build up to it. Ok? The last two are, the last two are once a child becomes uh is going through puberty, that's when more abstract thinking occurs and they start looking around that person has something that I don't. This is a time when you can sit down and start teaching them practical lessons about money and start including them in the family decisions. For example, budgeting for a vacation, you're go away. How much money will you be able to spend for a vacation? Give the child a budget and you help them understand how money works. And the last point is teach them to do things that don't involve spending so that they don't think that all of their happiness comes from spending money and what they do with money, but they can also get happiness for the things they don't do with money. I like that those free activities is my type of language. Thank you so much for joining us and giving us those great tips as well. Thank you, sir.