Kids Learning Money: Is it a Trend?

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Central Penn Parent

Parents should teach their children how to save and spend their money.

Sebastien A., Keira S., and Edhen A.

Do parents educate their kids about money with hopes for a better financial future? Is that what drove billionaires to become who they are today? 

According to Wells Fargo, most people conclude that the most difficult topic to discuss with others is personal finance, more so than politics, religion and even death. But for those parents who do discuss the world of finance with their children, they tend to limit their teaching to the basics like earnings, savings and spending.

“The earlier you know about how to work with your finances, the better off you will be without running into the situations we as parents have been through because we didn’t know,” said, Carmen from the Ramsey concierge center.

According to Yahoo Finance, 24% of people in the U.S claim that their parents didn’t give them any financial education as they were growing up. This runs the risk that people will go on to make more costly financial mistakes than the generation that preceded it. Many think this could change the outcome of the Gross Domestic Product in the near future.

“If more people understand how to manage and work with their finances, they could spend more which will eventually result as a higher GDP because 70% of the U.S economy is from consumer spending. There are some people that don’t spend as much as others because they can’t manage their finances so if they can, they will spend more leading into a higher GDP,” said Carmen.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the monetary value of all finished goods and services made within a country during a specific period. GDP provides an economic snapshot of a country, used to estimate the size of an economy and growth rate. In short, GDP is the value of a country in money terms.

Most parents focus on instructing their children about taxes, interest rates, and salary, but tend to ignore more advanced topics because they find it too difficult to communicate or believe it isn’t something to worry about it. Research conducted at North Carolina University found that most kids sensed that certain topics were not correctly explained  and that some topics weren’t fully explained.

Most likely, everybody wants what is best for their child.. Priorities like that can be deeply harmful in the future, as financial lessons of delaying gratification while saving before are far greater gifts to give.  A study conducted by Edutopia found that people who were taught financial education at a young age tended to have fewer debts and greater net worths as adults. If parents or schools fail to teach young ones about money, then who will? The concepts of money shouldn’t come from the lure of marketing advertisements. Parents, if your kids will eventually need to understand the value of money, wouldn’t it be better if that teaching came from you?