Financial Wisdom for Children | Digital Clean-up & Olympics Bite-Sized Moments

Teaching Financial Wisdom for Young Children

How do you help equip your children with a healthy relationship with money? For all they gave me, my parents did not prioritize financial education in our home, and I had to learn a few lessons the hard way as a result.

As a result, it’s challenged me to be even more intentional about teaching financial wisdom to my kids, starting at an early age. It’s not just about teaching them to budget or save; it’s about fostering an understanding of value, responsibility, and the role money plays in their lives.

This is where I have needed to lean on mentors and personal reflection for the how. Today, I have a few quick principles that have helped me so far to share with you:

Always Model Health: There’s no better way to communicate a healthy relationship with money than being able to tell your kids, “This is how our family does this.”
Create Experiences to Manage Money: Give your kids proportionate opportunities to earn and spend money. Let them make mistakes when there are fewer zeroes involved.
Ask “Why” Questions: Help your kids understand their relationship with money. What motivates them to earn? What do they really hope to gain when they spend?
Normalize Saving: Saving is a muscle that needs to be trained, and our culture isn’t eager to help. Normalize margin, even at a young age.
Tell Stories: Kids aren’t big on lectures, but stories carry much more weight. Share your own stories freely–mistakes and successes alike. Welcome questions.

Reflecting on these principles helps me refine my approach and ensure that my children are not just learning about money but also developing a healthy, balanced attitude toward it. It’s an ongoing journey, but one that is critical to their success and peace for the future.

Digital Cleaning Plan: Is there anyone who truly enjoys talking about cleaning up? Debatable. However, it is necessary when it comes to cleaning up finances, decluttering the house, or a good old-fashioned digital clean-up on your PC/MAC. A recent Wall Street Journal article addressed the idea of organizing your digital life so your loved ones can benefit from the organization of your digital history. Some of the key themes:

Label your files: Create a tagging system so they know what is relevant and what is for memories. Perhaps leave anything you don’t want others reading but are not ready to part with on a hard drive.
Leave an organized guide: includes lists of digital subscriptions, email addresses for key contacts, passwords, information on utilities, etc. We don’t often want to think about it, but it will help loved ones as they manage your estate.
Digitize physical memories: It’s never been simpler to digitize and label those old photographs. Consider using a company like Legacy Box.

You can find the whole article here.

Business Briefing

Ditching Low Mortgage Rates: Some homeowners are ditching the low mortgage rates and, actually, nearly doubling it. Even in this housing market, families are outgrowing their current homes, and people are aging and ready to downsize. According to recent surveys from the New York Fed, those with a mortgage rate below 3% say their likelihood of moving in the next three years would increase from about 17% to 28% if they could keep their current loan. (Axios)
Home Insurance Rates Rise: The cost of insuring the average U.S. home has spiked nearly 38 percent since 2019, to $2,478 annually, according to a report by the broker LendingTree. The rise is steeper for areas hit hardest by climate and weather-related disasters. In hurricane-prone Florida, premiums climbed 42.5 percent in that period; in Arizona, 62.1 percent. One California resident who lives in the wildfire-scorched hills north of Sacramento saw her premium leap fivefold this year, from $3,531 to $19,310. (Forbes)

Olympics & Social Media: Just like that, we’ve said goodbye to another Olympics. Paris provided a fantastic backdrop to so many great moments—perhaps primarily consumed as bite-sized moments thanks to social media. Consider this chart (“Linear TV used to be the entire story; now it’s just one of three ways to watch—broadcast, streaming, and social media. Interestingly, it’s becoming less of a distribution channel and more of a content generator that feeds video to the insatiable streaming and social media platforms.”)