We all want our kids to grow up and be happy, healthy, and financially stable. Teaching money values at a young age can help our kids to learn how money works, how to save, and how to invest. This week we’re talking to Maya Corbic from Teach Kids Money, and learning how to help our kids become financially literate and responsible!
It can seem like a huge task to teach our kids about financial responsibility; for many of us, it feels like we’re still teaching ourselves! Lucky for us, Maya has so much knowledge about finances and how to teach our kids about them. Maya is a CPA with a passion for teaching children about money, so she’s the perfect guest to tackle this topic!
This week, we’re learning about our money values and what they mean for teaching our kids, what our kid’s money personalities are, and how we can set ourselves and our kids up for a financially free future. We’re really into financial literacy in the UM Club, and this episode is a great way to bring your kids into the conversation.
Want to listen to this episode and others like it? Join the UM Club! Every week means new guest speakers and topics, so make sure to join now and never miss out on an episode!
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Guest Expert
Maya is a mom and a wife. She is a CPA who for the past 10 years has been helping parents teach their children how to be money smart. Her vision is to educate every child to become a financially independent adult.
In This Episode We Talk About
00:55 – Who is Maya?
04:15 – Finding out our money mindset.
09:20 – Learning your child’s money personality.
18:24 – Using chores to teach money values.
23:58 – Allowance and how to use it as a teaching tool.
37:23 – Resources and final thoughts.
38:36 – Where to find Mya!
Watch the Video
Listen to the Audio
Resource Links
Join the UM Club!
UM Club Facebook page
Maya’s website: Dinarii Financial Education Academy
Free webinar
Maya’s email: [email protected]
Instagram: @Teach.Kids.Money
Youtube: Teach Kids Money TV
Raising Financially Fit Kids by Joline Godfrey
You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth by T. Harv Eker
Read the Full Conversation
Hello and welcome to another episode inside the Unapologetic Moms Club. I am very excited today to be welcoming Maya Corbic from Teach Kids Money. Welcome, Maya.
Hi there. Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you for being here. I stumbled across Maya just last week, we’ve actually made this happen very quickly. And she partnered with Mariko from Parenting Fairly, who’s actually also been featured here inside UM Club. And I immediately loved Maya’s approach to teaching kids money and her way of simplifying things and explaining things. So I’m very excited to be exploring this topic with you.
I’m excited to be here and talk about it. Because that’s just my passion. That’s all I want to usually talk to people about – and sometimes they tell me to calm down, and let’s talk about other things.
Well here we can dive all into it. You can speak freely and passionately. So let’s start off, who are you? What do you do? And why are you so passionate about it?
So yeah, I’m actually a mom, first of all, I’ve got two kids, basically almost teenagers, my daughter will be a teen soon. I actually am a CPA, and I used to work as an auditor, an accountant, and a tax practitioner. And about 10 years ago, I wasn’t really happy with what I was doing. I was working crazy hours, not nine to five but more five to nine, wasn’t really there for my kids. And thankfully, at that point in time, my husband and I reached financial independence. And I actually have to kind of just go back a little bit further than that.
So I am actually a first-generation immigrant, my family immigrated from Bosnia with two suitcases and $50. And we lived in government housing, we lived in shelters, so I had to kind of figure things out. And anyway, I ended up getting myself educated, getting this wonderful job, which on the surface, I guess, it was wonderful, but I was working really, really crazy hours.
So it really helped me, you know, the job was paying well, so it helped me become financially stable, which enabled me actually afterwards to quit that job and start focusing on my passion, which ended up being teaching kids money. And the way I kind of got into it was because at that time, my kids were two and four years old. And I was just looking at like what are they going to learn in school, and I realized that we’re not going to learn much, because school doesn’t really educate kids about this. And you know, 10 years ago, financial literacy space looked very different than what it does today. Today there are a lot of people out there on the internet that have blogs, lots of information on Instagram. So we can get a lot of information on how to help us become more money smart. But back then there wasn’t as much.
So I thought, you know what, maybe I should do this. So I started kind of getting into it. And I did a lot of live workshops. I’m actually from Toronto, Canada. So prior to COVID, I ended up going to schools, teaching workshops to kids all the way from kindergarten to grade 12. I also taught a lot of parent workshops, because parent councils would hire me. And then COVID hit so then everything changed. And I had to switch my business and kind of do this stuff online.
But the beautiful thing about it was that I was able to access even more people worldwide. And so now I have this Instagram page that has thankfully grown and I get messages from people from all over the world telling me, you know, thank you, whatever you posted the other day was helpful, or they would ask me questions and stuff like that. So I’m just grateful to be here and to be helping parents educate their kids about money, because many of them were not taught by their parents, and they were not taught in school, and they don’t really know where to go or how to get started with this.
Absolutely. I feel like that’s similar to my situation. I did take some accounting courses in college, but that’s about it. And it doesn’t have much to do with actually managing personal finances. And you’re just such a wealth of knowledge and have so much experience in this area. So I’m excited to dig into things. So with that said, what are different kinds of values and lessons we can be teaching our kids about money or how do we even find out what our money values are and what we want to be instilling in our children?
Right. So you’re really starting at the right place, because a lot of times people skip certain important steps and they go straight into teaching their kids budgeting or giving them an allowance. But I think for the past 10 years, I realized that we have to build this – I call it a base or like a nucleus. And then from there, we expand our money teaching approach.
So essentially, what we have to do is really look at our own money values. And we all have different money values. And so I’ve come to realize that for the past 10 years, we all need to be teaching our kids about money differently, and how we teach them has to be in line with our money values. So it’s kind of like parenting, in that not all parents are the same way. Right? What’s the right way of parenting? I don’t know. I mean, something that you do is great, because it aligns with your family values, and somebody else might find a different way of parenting because it aligns with their family values. So same goes for money.
And I really wish that our society would just get out of this judgmental way – we’re judging other people, right? We’re always judging, like what are you spending, how are you teaching your child? Or how are you spending your money? And I wish that didn’t happen, because, in reality, we’re all doing the best we possibly can. And we’re all doing our best based on our values.
So when it comes to values, I always tell everybody – like if there’s another parent in the picture, or a guardian, I always think that the two parents really need to sit down and figure out “okay, what are the money values that are important to us?” But not just money values, just values in general. So it could be things like, let’s say there are people that are very religious, they go to church and they donate every Sunday. So do we want to teach our kids to give money? How important is that to us? And to some people, it’s not important at all, to some people, it is, right? So it’s agreeing on those basics, and then going from there and building this money teaching approach that is specific for your child and your family.
Yeah, and you’re so right, when it comes down to the values for every single family, because it is so different. And that’s come up repeatedly in different conversations with our community, and how maybe one family really values travel and adventure. But another family really loves cultivating their own home space and garden and things like that. And so they’re going to be spending money in very different ways. And it’s not that one is better than the other, it’s just different. And that’s what works for those families. And when you really hone in on your values, it also helps with that comparison thought trap we can get into. And seeing how other people do things, and then taking a moment, like, “you know, what, that actually doesn’t align with our family values.”
Absolutely. And going back to what you said, some people may want to spend more money on travel, some people may want to spend money differently. In this personal finance space on social media that I have been part of more so since we had COVID. I keep seeing people judging one another for, you know, spending money on this or spending money on that, and the way I view things is that we need to let people make their own choices.
As long as they are managing their money properly, at the end of the day, if they’re putting a certain amount into saving, and they’re investing, how are they going to spend the rest of their money is none of our business, right? Like if they want to spend it on a Chanel purse, good for them, as long as they pay all their bills, and they’re being responsible. Who am I to tell somebody that that’s wrong, right?
So that’s why I really believe – and there’s a reason why I think personal finance is called personal. Because we all have different beliefs and values and what’s important to us. So I really think we need to stop judging each other. And just as you said, hone in and figure out, “okay, what matters to me. And this is what I’m going to do. And I’m not going to compare myself to anybody else. Because I’m on my own path. I’m on my own journey.”
Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. And so once we’ve kind of honed in on our values, had some self-reflection on finances, what are some of those next steps we can do for laying that foundation for our kids?
Yes, so then other steps would be things like figuring out, let’s say, your child’s money, personality, so we’re all born with different money personalities. There is a lovely book out there by Joline Godfrey, it’s called Raising Financially Fit Kids. I really think of this lady, she’s like a pioneer of financial literacy for kids. As I said, 10 years ago things looked very different. I was actually looking for books on how to educate my kids about money. And I couldn’t find anything except for her book at the time.
And she talks about that, and there was some other research as well, there’s some other books about money personalities. And the idea is really to align your child’s money personality with your values. So, if, let’s say, we have a child that’s more of a spender, and just the money is burning a hole in their pocket. How do we make this child maybe more of a saver and somebody who is not going to spend all of their money – spend some, sure, but make sure that they’re also investing. And as they become an adult, they are actually taking smart approaches to money management before they spend all their money on things that give them pleasure.
Mm hmm. Could you dig into those money personalities a little bit more?
Yeah, so there are seven different money personalities. So I like to tell people sometimes, you know, you can – everyone else can probably think of either their own kids, or if they have a sibling, or they have cousins, right. Sometimes you just know, say, two different people that were born and raised by the same parents, they grew up in the same family, but they have totally different money personalities, right? And we typically know of a saver and a spender.
But the other money personalities are – there’s one that’s called hustler. This is a child that sees an opportunity in every situation, and they’re ready to make a deal? They’re entrepreneurs, but you know, you have to be careful with these kids, because they can actually sometimes get themselves in trouble. Like, they may do things that are illegal, so you have to kind of help them with their moral compass, right?
And then you have kids who are born and they are just givers, they don’t know how to say no, they feel sorry for everybody. They want to help everybody, help every charity. They’re just like giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, without any consideration for themselves, right? So it’s trying to help them understand that, yes, everybody else is important. We need to help everybody. But we also need to kind of start with ourselves first, make sure that we are okay. And then help everybody else, and so on.
So yeah, there are a lot of different personalities out there. And they’re not necessarily wrong, it’s more just celebrating the way these kids are, and not necessarily hindering them. Like if you have somebody who’s entrepreneurial or somebody who wants to help their community or help charities, that’s a good thing. It’s more about just putting them on the path that they can navigate this properly, so they don’t get themselves in trouble.
Yes, and I actually haven’t heard of money personalities before. And as you’re explaining some of them, I can think of certain people. And it’s also related to when we realize different things that are going on, say with our mental health or something like that, when we can put a name to it, and know what’s going on, it’s like, “oh, this is why and this makes sense.”
Right, right.
Yeah. So what are some other kind of steps for laying the foundation once you’ve kind of thought of values, knowing our child’s personality?
The big one, which, honestly, I didn’t realize how important it was until just a few years ago – and as I said, I’ve been doing this for many years – is our own money mindset. So we have all been raised in certain environments that have shaped our money mindset. A lot of people don’t have good relationships with money. Some people may think that people who have money, they’re greedy, or money is dirty, or only rich people can make more money, or you have to be a genius to make money. I’ve heard, actually, from my parent workshops all sorts of beliefs. Like only rich people invest or only men invest, so it’s really important for us to understand “okay, how did we grow up and what did we see when it comes to money, what did we hear, and what kind of beliefs did we assume because we were surrounded by our families?”
What did our parents pass down to us? What are their own money beliefs that we sort of absorb because we’ve been living with them. Some people tell me, you know, they grew up in a household where the parents always argued about the bills. So to them, they associate money with this negative energy. And some adults, they don’t want anything to do with money, because that’s what they think, they think money equals bills, equals mortgage payments, equals misery. And they refuse to even learn about money. Because there’s that negativity that stems from childhood.
So it’s really important for us to reflect upon that. There are two really great books that I would recommend. I do have in here, if you want to can just hold them up.
Sure that would be great, and they’ll be in the show notes as well.
So here we go. This is Raising Financially Fit Kids by Joline Godfrey. It’s an awesome book. This is a really good one. And we also have You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero. And Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth by T. Harv Eker. This one is really good as well because he has some concrete steps. It really kind of opened my eyes to some things that, for example, for me, when I was growing up, I didn’t even realize I was feeling about money in a certain way.
And the reason why that’s important is because when we start teaching our kids, if we’re not aware of this, this is going to permeate through our teaching style, through our conversations about money with kids. So I always give an example to the parents who are part of my Wealthy Kids Investment Club, I tell them, “you need to make sure that you feel confident and that you feel like you can invest, right? Because a lot of people have come to me, and they say, you know, “I’m a woman, I don’t know how to invest.” When I was growing up, my dad took care of all of our financial decisions. My mom, she didn’t really play any part in it. And also, we had a financial advisor, we never invested our own money, I don’t even know where to begin. I have people that say, “you know what, I just think the rich people invest, like I cannot learn how to invest.”
So if we have these thoughts and these beliefs, first of all, we are not going to invest. And then if we’re not investing, we can’t teach our children to invest, because we don’t have the knowledge and we can’t show them how to do it. So we really need to fix our own mindset before we can start teaching our kids.
Absolutely, with all different facets of parenting, right? We have our different limiting beliefs or triggers or whatever it might be from how we were raised. And we can just perpetuate that or if we take a step back, really take some time to think about it, work through it, do some inner child work, we can break those cycles, and then be a better leader for our children, and be able to teach those different values.
Right.
So once we’ve kind of gone through this, with the values, limiting beliefs, and things like that. And we’re starting to perhaps do more concrete things with our kids, thinking about allowance and chores. I know that’s the stage I’m in now, my son who’s four is in a stage where he’s asking for all sorts of toys. He likes the YouTube videos with the guys playing with toys, he has some very generous grandparents in his life. And he just thinks that toys are like an endless thing. And so I’m trying to teach him that that’s not actually the case. And you don’t necessarily just get all the ones you like and see. And so I’ve been thinking how allowance and chores might be a good way to help with that. You had a recent Instagram post kind of breaking down the different ways we can have a different choice and allowance system. I would love for you to dig into that with us.
Absolutely. Yes. So the allowance is actually one of those controversial topics, believe it or not. I have witnessed so many parents argue about it. And I mean, full-blown arguments, on social media or even just in person in my workshops. And I think, again, that’s another reason why I’m a big supporter of each family doing their own thing. Because what works for one family is definitely not going to work for another, or they may think something is going to work and they try it and it doesn’t work. That means they can just try something different.
But the big thing about allowance that I like to stress is that allowance is a teaching tool. It’s not a gift and a lot of times we think that if we’re giving money to somebody, it’s kind of like giving them a gift, right? But in this case, the allowance is really meant to be a tool that the kids can use to learn how to manage money. And at this time when they’re younger, they’re managing small amounts of money. And the idea is that it’s good for them to make mistakes, because hopefully they can learn from those mistakes. It’s better that they make those mistakes now, rather than later, when they are in their late 20s, or 30s, they have a great job, they’re making lots of money, we don’t want them to make mistakes then, because those are costlier mistakes, right?
I’ve experienced that.
Yes, yeah, many people have, right? So the idea behind the allowance is really then just okay, giving them this money, but it’s not just handing it over, right? Like, we want them to do something with it. And I can talk about that in a moment. But when it comes to allowance, again, there are three different approaches. So it’s either chores method – and the parents that support this method, they actually want to instill good work habits for their kids, they want to make sure that the kids understand money doesn’t grow on trees, we have to work for money. And then obviously, if a child doesn’t do the chores, they don’t get paid.
The second approach is no chores. And these parents actually believe that kids should be doing chores because they’re a contributing member of a family unit. So when they get older, nobody’s going to pay them to make their bed or take the trash out or something similar. So these parents, they just give allowance every week. And if, let’s say, the child is misbehaving, or maybe they don’t do their chores, what they do is they take away the opportunity to watch TV, they take away the screen time, or playdates or something else. But they don’t take away the money because money is a teaching tool.
And then the third approach is the mix between the two. So the kids still get an allowance every week or bi-weekly, however parents decide. But there is an opportunity for kids to actually earn money by doing certain chores. And those could be the chores that parents maybe pay somebody else to do. Like I have teenagers that are fully capable of cleaning now. So let’s say if I had a cleaning lady, I could substitute my cleaning lady with my teenagers and just pay them not my cleaning lady. Or let’s say carwash, right. That’s another example. Instead of spending $10 to get my car washed somewhere, I could just pay my kids. So that approach combines the other two.
And there’s really a fourth one as well, it wasn’t on that post, but I put it in the caption. The fourth one is people who just believe that, you know, they don’t want to give any money to their kids. And that’s fine. Again, everybody needs to do what works for them. I think in that case, I think those parents really need to set a stellar example of money management and show their kids how they do it so that their kids actually see things as they’re growing up. And they know, “okay, this is the best way to do things, this is what I’m going to do as they get older.”
Mm hmm. I love how you broke it down and explained the values for each of those, and how it can work, because I love the idea of instilling those hard-working values, and you work hard to get more money. But at the same time, like you touched on with the no chores one, is I want our kids to know that we just help out as a house together to keep our living space clean and taken care of and that sort of thing. So the hybrid method’s really interesting. And again, how you touched on, sometimes neither of those, there’s that fourth approach that does work well for some people as well.
Right, exactly. And you know what, everybody’s different. I think everybody just needs to decide what works best for them.
Mm hmm. And so say we’ve chosen what works best for us. And then we’re in this process and the allowance is that teaching tool. So what are different lessons and things that we can teach them with that allowance?
So the idea is once they get this allowance, then you don’t want to just hand it over. Because if you just hand it over, and you say, “okay, here’s some money,” they don’t know what to do with it. Of course they’re going to spend it, right, unless their money personality is that they’re going to save and they’re just going to watch that money grow. But that’s not good, either. Right?
For example, our family value is to raise well-rounded kids, right? I actually have a saver and a spender. And over the years I’ve been able to sort of bring them to somewhere in the middle that actually is aligned with our family values. Because I think even a child that just wants to save money – in my personal opinion, again, this is just my view – it’s not good to just have that money there and just watch it. Money for me, personally, is meant to be enjoyed, as long as we enjoy it responsibly.
So we need to save some, we need to invest some, but I want my kids to spend on something that gives them joy, I want them to bless other people with that money. And so those are the values that we’re trying to instill in our kids, right?
And so when we give this money to our kids, we want to, typically, ask them to do something with it. So it could be like, to divide this money into four different categories, it would be saving, investing, donating, and spending. And the idea is really – and this is the hard one. If they have already saved, invested, and donated, that whatever is left for spending – this is the hard thing for parents, is like we just need to let them spend it any way they want to. And this is so hard to do, because so many times we may think that’s a waste of money. But that’s how they learn. That’s how they learn proper money techniques.
So I’ll give you an example. My daughter, a long time ago when she was little, I remember one time she spent money on like a silly ball. And it was ridiculous. And I thought it was way overpriced. And literally this ball was made out of other smaller balls, and it just fell apart within a couple of days. But I tried staying away from telling her “don’t buy it,” whatever. But then a few days later, when this big ball fell apart, then all these little balls were like all over our floor. I remember talking to her and I said “so okay, let’s just talk about this purchase. Was it a good buy? Would you buy it again? Have you learned anything from it?” But it was just like a gentle conversation, right? It wasn’t like, “hey, I told you so, I didn’t think that was a good idea.” It was more like, “let’s have a conversation. Did you learn anything from this experience? Would you do this again?” So I always think it’s good to follow up with them, and talk about the purchases that they have made.
Absolutely. And again, that carries over with so many things, where you can just kind of take advantage of the moment and just have a conversation about whatever it is. And it just helps lay that foundation, all these tiny conversations on top of each other?
Absolutely, yeah.
So you mentioned kind of breaking down into the four categories. Is that something you’d recommend like doing right away or kind of build on over time? I’m thinking of young kids, their allowance is likely going to be quite small. I don’t know, if you have any kind of rough guidelines. Obviously, it’s going to be different for everyone. But kind of starting out how much would be good to provide for an allowance, thinking of a five-year-old with very small amounts compared to a 12-year-old who is able to do those extra things to earn money. And then when it would make sense to kind of do that breakdown.
Right. So when it comes to how much to give them, it really depends on each parent. I always suggest that – obviously, little kids don’t need as much money. I think as the kids get older, their purchases are more expensive.
But I’ll give an example. I think we have to consider a lot of things when we make decisions. Let’s say for example, how much money to give them. So one time I had this one lady, at the end of one of my workshops that I was teaching live, she came to me and she was very proud. And she announced that she was only giving 25 cents a week to her kids for allowance. And I asked her, “why are you only giving him 25 cents?” And she said “well, I want them to understand that money is really difficult to earn, money is really difficult to come by. So I just don’t want them to take money for granted.”
And then I asked her, I said “okay, well first of all, what are your money beliefs? Do you want to instill that kind of money mindset, that money is really difficult to come by? Or do you want to instill the growth mindset? We’re capable of earning money and making money, or do you want to associate this difficulty, this negative energy with money?”
The second thing was like “okay, so you’re giving them 25 cents. So what are they going to do with this 25 cents? Can they save? Can they invest it? Can they donate it? Can they spend it?” Even like back then for 25 cents you couldn’t buy anything. Maybe you could buy a gumball from a gumball machine, right? So for these kids to let’s say learn how to save, and let’s say they have a goal, I don’t know, maybe they want the toy and this toy is $20. It’s going to take them forever to save. And they’re little kids, you know, we’re trying to teach them delayed gratification, but to wait – I don’t know, I’d have to divide now.
It’s like years.
Yeah, I think it’s like, what is it, 20 months? That’s just my kind of in my head calculation. So these kids are not going to wait that long, they’re just going to lose interest in learning anything about money. And then also, you can’t really invest 25 cents. And then I mean, I guess you could give 25 cents to a homeless person, but then you’re giving away all your money. It’s not just one lesson that we’re teaching them with this allowance. We’re teaching them numerous lessons, right? So we have to really think about it.
And then with the younger kids, for example, when my kids were little we invested on their behalf some of this money that they saved – they didn’t even realize that we were investing, because they were too young to talk about it. But essentially, we did ask them to save a portion. And then we would automatically invest that portion. And then the other portion that was left for spending, it was really just there. And we continued accumulating it until they wanted to buy something. But I actually wanted to go back to something that you said before we even started recording, and you said that your parents forced you to save 50%.
Yeah, so my parents – we grew up similar to you, like government low-income housing. And we were a low-income family. And looking back, I doubt they were taught very much about money. And they were trying their best. But yeah, I remember I got $15 – I want to say it was every two weeks, but I could be wrong on that. And then, for learning saving, we had to put half of it away to save. And at that time, and I’ve talked to my mom about this, it felt like my money was being stolen from me. And so it’s taken me like decades at this point. I think I was 10, in my early 30s now. And just the last few years, I’ve really been doing that inner work that like no saving is okay, saving is a good thing. It’s not that your money has been stolen away from you. But yeah, it was half and it was traumatizing. And it’s taken some time to work through. And so that’s why I really want to do things differently this time around.
And it’s so interesting how, you know, you see how money is actually connected to our emotions and to our money mindset. And so I just have a question. So when your parents asked you to save, was that money put into a savings account for you to use later?
Yeah, so it was a savings account like that. And to be honest, I don’t really remember what happened with those early-day savings. But I do remember two instances where my mom was helping me save. And I saved over a period of a few months, I believe. At this point, I’m not sure if it was from a higher allowance, or I did a lot of odd jobs. And that was probably what this particular purchase was. But I saved and I got these amazing boots. I was like 13, like the early 2000s, these boots with the fur all over that went up high. And it did feel so good, like getting that purchase at the end.
Right. You know, it’s so interesting. So my kids, when they were younger, we’ve been asking them to save half. And that’s why I’m interested in your story. You know, sometimes as parents, we think we’re doing the best thing, but we don’t know how it’s going to backfire. And so it’s really interesting because my son has no problem putting aside 50% of his income.
But my daughter, I started noticing – because she’s going to be a teen in just a few days – I started noticing that she’s a little bit like “well, why?” And so now I’m kind of like letting her, I said, “okay, we have to put something away into savings. You choose how much that’s going to be.” And she’s been making some choices. You know, it’s not 50%, but it’s still quite a high percentage. But I tried to link it – and see, that’s the thing too. When I when I’m teaching kids about money, or helping parents teach kids about money, I try to link whatever it is that we’re saving for or investing, I try to link it with an end goal, an end goal that’s truly meaningful, and that they will get joy from.
And I like to actually divide savings into short-term and long-term. So short-term would be something that they would get within the next six months or maybe a year, like the boots that you got that are really cool. Because you want them to get that instant gratification, right? It’s still delayed gratification, but it’s in the shorter time period. Because if we’re just investing or saving for like, I don’t know, retirement or college or university, who cares? For kids that seems so far. Like you said, my money is being stolen.
So I think it’s really important to set goals, but also set goals in the near future that they can achieve. And it teaches them how to achieve goals and practice that delayed gratification, but in a few months, okay, we’re actually able to purchase whatever it is that we’ve been saving for and it just feels so good.
Mm hmm. Yeah, there’s so many facets to it, it really isn’t as simple as like $1 per age. It’s really tying it into like your values, what you want to teach, what their thought processes are able to do at their age. So perhaps starting out, say for my kids, it could be maybe around $10 to $20, a portion of it we just automatically save or invest for them. And then they have that portion that maybe it’s related to, like my son really wants an Iron Man suit. That’s what he’s asking for. So I can think of like, “okay, maybe over a year he can buy this for himself,” and then kind of break it down that way because that’s what makes sense for the teaching and values for us.
Right. And I used to have – I changed my website, but I used to have a lot of free resources on my website. But anybody can just do this as a fun thing with their kids. I used to have this page, it was just a simple page, and it had like a thermometer. And next to it, we would put a picture of whatever it is that my kids were saving for. And then we would, on top of the thermometer, we would write how much it would cost including taxes. And then we would colour in this thermometer, depending on how much money they have in their savings account. So it used to be on our fridge, and then they could actually see it and how close they’re getting to that goal. And it just made them a little bit more inspired or wanting to save towards it. Because that visual really helped.
Yeah, kids love the visuals. Mariko – I’ll touch on that a lot with her parenting stuff with routines and different things like that. And I can see the visual connection and helping kind of have that reminder and get excited about it.
Right, yeah.
Yeah. Well, we are coming up to time, I knew this was a loaded topic. And hopefully we can have you back to dig into more specifics of the many different facets of this throughout raising our kids. Are there any last words or resources you wanted to touch on and provide when it comes to laying that foundation to teach your kids about money?
Yeah absolutely. So I actually host a free webinar where I actually talk about the framework that I have developed over the past 10 years. And the idea behind the framework is really to help parents build their own personalized money teaching approach. So we start off with the basics. And then I tell them, you know, you could choose this, or you could choose that, I tell them about different options. And so this, as of right now, I haven’t decided on the date. But I think by the time this interview is actually made public, there will be a date and I will provide the exact date and the link that can hopefully be put in the caption and then everybody can access it. And if you want to register, it’s free. It’s about an hour long, and I have received very positive feedback. People are finding it very helpful.
Perfect. Yeah, we’ll definitely include links for that. And on that note, where can everyone find you if they’re wanting to learn more from you right away and get that content on a daily? Or however regularly you post because you have awesome posts.
Yeah, thank you so much. I’m actually on Instagram. My handle is @Teach.Kids.Money. I also have a YouTube channel. I don’t really post there as much, but it’s called Teach Kids Money TV, and my website. So if you actually put in RichChild.club it will take you to my website. I have a lot of helpful blog posts there. And then I have an investment family membership club that actually helps families learn how to invest so you can check that out.
But I’m always available to answer anybody’s questions, feel free to send me emails. Actually, just the other day I had somebody who sent me a message and he was so surprised that I was actually answering his question. He’s like, “I cannot believe you’re actually answering my question.” I was like, “well, I don’t know, I mean, you sent me a message and it was a specific question. Why not?” I’d like to help as many people as I can.
I love that. And we’ll include the links for all of that, so it’s really easy for listeners to go and check out what they’re interested in looking at. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your great knowledge with us. It’s been a great chat.
Thank you so much for having me on.
And thank you for all those that have been listening. I hope you learn lots. I’m excited to dive into this with you. So make sure you head to the Facebook group or group chat and let’s talk about it. Let’s figure out our values together. Until next time, take care!
Thanks for listening this week! If you want to chat about this episode with me and other moms, check out the exclusive UM Club Facebook page! Thanks again, and we’ll see you next week!
