Recently I’ve been sharing tax strategies related to getting your children in the game and on your payroll. Now that you’ve put your children to work, the next step is to put their money to work!
There are many ways your children can put their money to work. Here are two of those ways:
As parents we all want to give our children everything we could never have in our young lives. I cannot forget the emotional reaction I had to the lucky few of my fellow middle school students regaling our class with stories of their family summer vacations at Disney World in Florida. I never did get to go to Disney World as a child and this created such a strong memory for me that one of the first things I did after my third child was born, was to begin saving for Disney World. It took three ½ years but I was finally able to take our family on the vacation I could never have as a child. The point of this story is that sometimes childhood emotions surrounding money have a profound impact on us as adults; driving us to do things that may not be in the best interest of our children, such as spoiling them. Take a look around and you will see ten, eleven or twelve year olds walking around with cell phones, iPods, Prada bags. Underlying this is, I believe, our desire to provide our children with a better life. We all seem to want for our children what we could not have, ourselves, as kids. But where does this leave our children? Will they grow up being spoiled and self indulgent, expecting from society rather than being grateful for what society has given them? Is our parental need to make up for what we lacked in our adolescent lives going to hurt our children, and if so, how do we mitigate this?
Creating a Money Management Education Plan to properly educate your children about money requires three important and co-dependent elements: