The Best Time to Learn About Money

I am often asked in jest what I would say if my son told me he wanted to be artist, cowboy, or any other stereotypical “lifestyle” career that is perceived to be accompanied by low pay.  Counter to what many assume, I am not trying to dictate or force a career path upon my son by teaching him how money work and financial concepts.  My goal is to provide him a sufficient financial education that when the time comes he can make a decision on career path with adequate knowledge.   

Most of us, including myself, made some of the biggest decisions in our lives when choosing whether or not to go to college, selecting our first job, and electing our lifestyle once we were “on our own”, such as, what car to drive, purchasing a career wardrobe, buying a house, etc.  What society teaches is that you should go to college, get a degree, find a safe secure job, buy a house as an investment, buy the car you “deserve”, and buy a killer wardrobe to look the part for your newly obtained job.  The result, $200,000 in debt in the blink of an eye, and that assumes you got through college without student loans.   Thus begins the rat race.  The next 20 to 30 years, if not the rest of your life, will be spent paying for those decisions and digging out of that hole.  If we had learned about how money works, the different types of income, the benefits and draw backs of each type, and the financial consequence of those decisions, we may have elected very different decisions.   With a solid financial education, we may have chosen exactly same decisions, but we would not have been surprised by the consequences of those decisions.   

My goal in teaching financial education is to empower people to make sound decisions based on knowledge.  The best time to make those decisions is before you find yourself in debt $200,000+. Since most of those decisions are made before we are 25 years old, I focus on educating children.  What are you doing to equip you and your  children with a sound financial education?