The success of your children starts with you
Looking back at your younger years and all the financial challenges you’ve been through; don’t you wish there was someone older and wiser who had taught you about how to handle your money? Now that you have children or younger relatives, it’s time to pass down the knowledge you gained over the years to prevent them from repeating the same mistakes you made.
Jeanette’s top tips
on teaching children
about money
- Start having informal conversations about money with your children in a relaxed atmosphere. Chat to them about their goals for their money and what they’d like to save for.
- Teach them the value of money by making them earn it. Buy them a piggy bank and when there’s enough money saved, help them to open a savings account. Show them how to play on the banking app to see how their savings are growing each month.
- Open a tax-free investment account the day they are born. By contributing the R36K per year, by the time your child is 17 years old, you would have contributed the maximum limit of R500K.
Start early, start with the basics
Experts have found that the earlier you start a child’s financial education process, the better. Lessons should begin before age 7 because research shows that money habits and attitudes are already formed by then. Once your child is old enough to know they shouldn’t be eating coins, you should introduce them to cash. Explain what money is and how it’s used. Showing them how money works can be more effective. So, let them see you making purchases.
Helping your children to become financially independent
Looking for ways to empower your child to be more money savvy?
Albert van Wyk, who’s an entrepreneur, property investor and an author of a best seller: How to become a millionaire at 22, shares these tips:
Financial education
Teach them the basic financial building blocks to understand how to make money and grow their wealth by encouraging them to read books about money. If they don’t want to read, pay them to read.
No pocket money
Encourage them to find ways to ‘make a plan’ to generate an income to buy the things they want. That’s how you build an entrepreneur mindset from an early age.
Allow creativity
Instead of sheltering them, allow your children to be creative, try new business ideas – to make money and to lose money. That way, they learn entrepreneurship through experience.
This past Monday on Geldhelde
Momentum Metropolitan deputy CEO and Momentum Investments CEO, Jeanette Marais, gave her take on how to teach children about money. Catch Geldhelde every Monday at 19:30 on VIA DStv channel 147.
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EPISODE 13: 17 MAY 2021