Teaching Kids to Manage Money

I am a big watcher of breakfast TV, usually Good Morning America. This morning, there was an excellent piece done by Mellody Hobson on teaching your kids how to handle money. Since I am writing a series of blog posts about my past and how my parents NEVER taught me about money management, I poured an extra cup of tea and watched the segment.

Quote:

Discussing money with their children is something many parents dislike greatly, according to Charles Schwab & Co.'s latest online survey. While they were eager to teach their offspring about other milestones, they were sheepish about handling money and budgeting issues.

In fact, 70 percent had taught their children how to do laundry, but only 34 percent had showed them how to balance a checkbook. The gap is more curious because many parents wished they had learned more about budgeting, saving and investing when they were young. Fifty-seven percent said they wished they had learned more about money as teenagers.

This is a scary statistic, only 34% of parents surveyed have taught their kids how to balance a checkbook. I know my parents did not teach me, I learned how to do it by reading the back of my bank statement for my first checking account. No one every sat me down and taught me about credit cards and credit card debt either.

You can read the whole article here. To see what others have said about the segment and the article, you can click here.