A parent teaches kids money skills through pocket money and real-world choices. On shopping trips, they ask "value for money?" and whether the child will want something in a year. When the child earns £5 stamping envelopes, the parent offers £8 in savings instead, showing how interest works. The child chooses the higher amount.
Chapters
It's never too early to teach your kids the value of money and saving. My kids get pocket money just like everybody else's kids get. We go into, you know, Smyths Toys or something like that, and I'm kind of allowing them to make choices. I'll ask them just one really simple question: do you feel that's value for money? Now, as a parent, like, they won't understand it to start off with, so you've got to persevere. This is like a year or 2 years' worth of just getting them to understand this one question. Another question is, do you think you're still gonna like this in a month's time or a year's time? You know, think about some of your other toys. And then they're like, oh no, maybe not. I like to post out my books regularly and I have a process where I stamp the envelopes with my logo and it's really boring, right? I asked Poppy if she would do it for a bit of pocket money. She did it, did a fantastic job of it. And at the end of it she said, how much pocket money have I got for this? Well, I said, I'll give you 2 choices. You can have £5 and that goes into like, you can spend it like immediately, that's your money, spend it how you like. Or what I'll do is I'll round it up to £8, but that goes into your long-term savings, right? So this is helping kids now understand like the benefit of an understanding of interest. So she gets £3 instant interest, 60% on her £5, if she chooses to save it. I was super proud of her. She immediately went without hesitation, I'll take the £8, please. I was like, ooh, now we're onto something here because she may not understand it, but that builds habits.
