Money Rules Kids Should Learn

The 15 Money Rules Kids Should Learn

By: Wall Street Jounral; Jeff D. Opdyke |
Published: March 31, 2010

It's a simple calculus, kids and money: From birth until college graduation, children consume dollars like they're chicken nuggets.

For those of us who aren't independently wealthy, that puts unrelenting pressure on the family pocketbook. The financial demands of raising a child require that money you otherwise might use to prepare for retirement, or to save for a nicer house, a sportier car or a swankier vacation, must, out of necessity, be earmarked for Lego sets and pediatrician visits and school uniforms and Christmas toys and a college savings account and a minivan and a trip to Disneyland … and lots of, well, chicken nuggets.

I'm not saying this to disparage kids. I have two of my own, and money is nothing in comparison to the happiness they bring me and my wife. Yet happiness does not negate the fact that the moment a child arrives -- and, actually, months before the arrival -- your role as an adult changes in dramatic, profound ways.

And so, too, does your family's financial life.

Not only are you now on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in costs over the next two decades, you also have a new obligation to teach your children about money so that they grow into adults who are at home in the financial world and who have a healthy relationship with money. You, the parent, are the first and most crucial link in that learning process.

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