How to teach your kids about money, when the biggest lesson is you

I’m paying my kids twenty five pounds each to attend Rebel Finance School. It’s completely free financial education, with nothing to buy because the wonderful Alan and Katie Donegan have nothing to sell. At the time of writing we haven’t started, but their financial education began six years ago, without any of us calling it that.

Me and Mrs W did the first cohort back in 2020, and from that summer on, our two have watched us sit down at the kitchen table every month for our finance meeting. We’ve been transparent about what we’ve been doing. That, I’ve come to think, has taught them more than any course ever will. They’ve learned that money is a priority.

We’ve loosely talked about them doing the course before, but what changed this summer was a conversation with friends. They’d sat their kids down to talk about future careers, opening up honestly about what university actually costs. We know a family whose son will carry around eighty thousand pounds worth of debt before he has earned a single day’s wage. Ours are old enough now to sit through the course themselves, and twenty five pounds each to have them walk into all this with their eyes open looks to me like the best investment we could make.

We want them to have a good education and real opportunities. If the price of that is starting life behind the line, we owe it to them to ask whether the trade is worth it. They’ll choose their own path, that isn’t in question but in a world where AI has arrived and nobody is quite sure which careers are still standing in twenty years then it needs to be worth it.

So I’ve had a pile of bullet points sat in my notes app about this for a long time and with the family doing this course together it’s about time I put them to work.

Think about how you learned to be a parent. Nobody handed you a manual, did they? You watched your own parents thousands upon thousands of times, and you absorbed it. Some of it you kept, and some of it you’ve spent years trying to put down. That’s how humans learn the big things, it’s called procedural learning by watching, never by being told.

Now run the same film forwards. Your kids are recording you right now. How you talk about money, or whether you don’t, how you argue about it or whether the mention of a bill changes the mood. They’re taking it all in, and it’s quietly becoming their values. More is caught than taught.

There’s no shortage of tips out there, is there. Pocket money charts, savings jars, apps with cartoon pigs on them. The problem was never a lack of tips or tools that solve problems, the same way getting fit was never a lack of exercise plans. Our kids aren’t learning money from the tips or the tools, they’re learning it from us.

None of that means the education doesn’t matter, because it does, and they’ll need every bit of it. What I’d say is that the education goes in far more easily when the right values have laid the foundations. Values form early and they form quietly, out of what a child sees at four and hears at six, and they set like concrete. Teaching a nineteen year old how a credit card works takes an afternoon. Undoing what he decided about money at six takes half his adult life, sometimes longer, sometimes never.

The real question isn’t how do I teach my kids about money. I wonder what changes if you ask it this way instead: how do I become a better money role model?

Most parents I meet assume this is a job for school but what if we thought of ourselves as the headteacher of our children’s financial education? Everything changes when you take on the job. Why leave this to chance or other people if it’s so important.

Before you look at what your kids are learning, we need to go back a bit further, because you learned it somewhere too.

What did money sound like in the house you grew up in? Was it a raised voice through a wall, silence at the table, a subject that never appeared at all? What did you learn about people who had it? What did you learn about asking for it?

I can remember my own parents arguing about money when I was a boy. A school trip to Switzerland came up, the final payment was due, and I hid the letter rather than hand it over. When they found it, the question was, why didn’t you tell us. I’ve often wondered what would have changed if they’d asked themselves a harder one: why did our son feel he had to hide it?

When I asked what something cost, I got told ‘money in fair words’. I still don’t know what it was supposed to mean, other than don’t ask. Nobody was cruel about it but nothing was explained either, and I grew up understanding that the cost of things and money itself were dirty words and shouldn’t be uttered.

I can also remember shame being a way to teach me a lesson about money, and I wonder whether that contributed to not feeling good enough, to not feeling enough, and was the push for me to buy those nice things as a way to make myself feel better.

Years later, an adult with credit cards and a problem, I said nothing to anybody. I put my head in the sand like an ostrich and let it grow, month after month, until it was the size of a house. Is that any wonder, when you follow the line back? A child taught that money is conflict and secrecy grows into a man who cannot say the words I’m in trouble out loud.

That’s what money conflict teaches. The lesson is never about budgets, it’s that money is dangerous to talk about, so they stop bringing it to you. What are you teaching yours, that money is a tool they’ll one day pick up, or something to be frightened of?

Then have a look at where all that left you. Some of us cannot open the banking app. Some of us count every pound and can’t enjoy one of them. Some of us say yes to everything our kids ask for, because nobody ever said yes to us, and we call it generosity. Some of us don’t tell our partner what’s in the account. Every one of those is a child’s clever solution to a childhood problem, still running, decades later, in a grown man’s house.

It is not your fault that money makes your hackles come up. Nobody sat you down and taught you, and you didn’t get to choose the house you learned it in. What happens next is yours to carry though. Once you notice a pattern you’ve given yourself a gift, because now you get to colour the picture in the way you want, instead of acting on autopilot and your kids get to benefit from this too.

Here’s where it gets uncomfortable, and where I’d ask you to stay with me rather than close the tab.

A dad who had nothing growing up buys his kids everything, and calls it love. A dad who works late buys his way back into the room. The toy going into the trolley is doing a job, and I wonder whether the job has much to do with the child at all.

Have a look around the house. Is it overrun? Do they get things simply because they asked? What does a toy mean to a child who has never once had to want for one, or wait? What value do they place on the things they own and what has your contribution to that been?

I say this to every group I work with. You cannot spoil your kids with love, it is absolutely impossible, no preconditions, no ceiling on it. Things are different, because things run out of meaning the moment they stop being rare. The dads who mix those two up are almost always the ones trying hardest.

You already know what a child feels on Christmas morning after a year that has been one long Christmas. Whether you’re comfortable with that is a question only you can answer, and it’s worth answering honestly, because they will be an adult with money for a lot longer than they’ll be a child with toys.

The sweets at the till. The game so we get a quiet Sunday. We’ve all done it, I’ve done it, and it works, which is precisely the trouble.

A child who is bought out of a feeling learns that feelings are things you buy your way out of. Sit with that one for a minute. Wanting is uncomfortable, waiting is uncomfortable, and if a small person never has to sit in that discomfort, I wonder what happens when they’re twenty three, they want something, they haven’t got the money, and a screen offers them buy now, pay later in two clicks.

I can’t prove the sweets at the till become the credit card at twenty three. I’d ask you to wonder about it though, because the wondering will change what you do this weekend more than any evidence I could hand you.

Were you ever told you were bad with money? Careless. Useless with it. A soft touch.

Labels seep into identity. You’re terrible with money becomes I am terrible with money, and how does anyone get better at something they believe is their character? A man who was told that at nine is now, thirty years later, three sentences away from saying it to his own kids. That loop closes in an afternoon if nobody pays attention to it.

Have a think about the seesaw for a minute. On one side of it sit all the money decisions your kids get wrong, the impulse buys, the tenner gone in an afternoon. On the other side sit the ones they get right, the saving up, the walking away from something, the choosing the cheaper one so there’s enough left for their sister. Which end is touching the floor? Most of us notice the waste every single time and let the good decisions go past without a word, and our kids draw the obvious conclusion, that money is a thing you get told off about.

Notice it out loud when they get it right. I saw you put that back. You waited three weeks for that, didn’t you.

Keep it about the decision, never the person. Instead of that was a waste of money, wonder out loud with them. I wonder how you’ll feel about that in six months? Will you have enough left for the rest of the holidays? Then let them buy it anyway if they choose. A tenner wasted at nine is the cheapest financial education they will ever get, and the same mistake at twenty nine, with a credit card behind it, costs a fortune. Let them spend the lot on a toy and find there’s nothing left for an ice cream, because that lesson costs them an afternoon. Hold the shackles tight for eighteen years and the same lesson arrives the week they get a student overdraft, and it costs them a decade. I wonder how balanced you are between the two.

The same goes for their dreams. When yours announces they want to be a dog walker as an example, the easy move is, you don’t want to do that, it doesn’t pay enough. Every time we do it, they learn to stop telling us things. Nobody wants judgement every time they talk about what’s in their head. Try, tell me a bit more about that, and see where it goes. Learn about why they fancy that vocation. Say that it sounds interesting, say that it would be fun. Say ‘I wonder how much they earn? Have you thought about what kind of life you want to live and how much that will cost? I wonder if that will pay for that lifestyle?’ Most important of all say it without the critic coming out of your mouth and ensure it sounds neutral.

Two dads, same till, same child, same toy.

The first says, we can’t afford it. His child walks off with questions he’ll never ask out loud. Are we poor? Is money running out? Should I be worried? Say it often enough and money starts to mean fear.

The second says, we could buy that, and we’re choosing to spend our money on the holiday or the trip to the zoo instead. It’s the same outcome, no toy, yet an entirely different lesson. Money becomes a choice you’re in charge of rather than a monster at the door.

You’ll get it wrong, changing your language when you’ve had it drilled into you is hard. I get it wrong, and I do this for a living. When it comes out sideways, go back and repair it. Sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that, what I actually meant was. Do it until it becomes a habit, because the repair is the most important. They learn that a rupture over money can be mended, which is a thing a great many adults have never once seen done.

Get them guessing the total at the till on the weekly shop, closest one wins. Cook a favourite pudding together and work out what it actually cost against the shop bought one, using the flour you used rather than the whole bag. Help them sell the toys they’ve outgrown, and let them keep the money. Teach them to spot the words while you’re out, credit, overdraft, buy now pay later, interest free, an advance on their pocket money. Set aside a bit of whatever comes in before anything gets spent, and let them watch you do the same, so paying yourself first becomes a habit rather than a lecture. Sit an older one down with a compound interest calculator and watch their face when they see what money left alone for forty years turns into. Ours were amazed, honestly. Let them see your monthly money meeting, pancakes on the table, so talking about money in this house is simply normal.

None of that will do much if the soundtrack underneath it is stress and silence. It all gets easier once they’re watching a parent who has made some sort of peace with money, or is at least trying to in front of them.

Answer these on your own, or better, with your partner.

What is your last month of spending teaching them about what matters?

Whose voice comes out of your mouth when you talk to them about money? Where did you first hear it?

Which of your parents’ money habits did you keep? Did you ever decide to keep it, or did it just come with the furniture?

When you buy them something, is it for them, or is it doing a job for you?

If your child ends up exactly as you are with money at forty, is that alright with you?

Just the one. Catch yourself the next time we can’t afford it is on its way out, and swap it for the choosing sentence. We’re choosing to spend our money on something else. Say it enough times and you’ll notice it isn’t only the kids who start to believe it.

This is a long game, remember, years rather than weeks. You don’t need to be sorted with money to raise kids who are good with it. Aim for the bullseye and you’ll hit the board, and the board is good enough. If money is a real pressure in your house right now, free confidential help exists through MoneyHelper, StepChange and National Debtline, and getting your own foundations right is the most powerful lesson your kids will ever watch you learn.

We talk about generational wealth as though it’s the house we leave them rather than the financial education. Ask yourself whether, if a large sum arrived in their lap tomorrow, they’d have the first idea what to do with it. I know which of the two I’d rather hand over, and it isn’t the house. I wish I’d had these foundations when I was their age.

As for paying my kids to sit through Rebel Finance School, a free course that taught us most of what we know, I’m under no illusions. The course isn’t the thing that will teach them. Watching their parents choose to keep learning about money, year after year, that’s the bit that goes in.

At what age should I start teaching my kids about money? Earlier than most of us get round to it. A three year old doesn’t know what a mortgage is, and she already knows whether the word money makes the room go quiet. Whatever age yours are now is the right one to start.

Am I spoiling my child? You can’t spoil a child with love. Things are a different matter. If it’s a question you’re asking yourself, have a look at what usually decides the answer when they ask you for something, whether it’s their need or your own discomfort at saying no.

Should I tell my kids how much I earn? A lot of parents find it helps, as long as the number arrives without anxiety wrapped round it. If saying it out loud makes your chest tighten, that’s worth looking at before you say it in front of them.

What if I’m bad with money myself? Then be honest with them about it. That’s worth more than a tidy balance sheet you never talk about. What they need is to see that the subject can come up without everything going quiet. Explain in an age appropriate way some of the decisions you’ve made and what you should have done. Talk about what you are doing to fix it.

Does giving pocket money for chores work? Pocket money that is simply given every week teaches them it’s owed. Money earned for real jobs teaches earning. Either can work, how about a mixture of both so that they learn to manage a budget but understand that work gets them money?