Raising Money-Savvy Kids

Ideally we should be telling our bank how much money we have, instead of the bank informing us of the account balance

- Gaurav Mashruwala

Wealth creation is a habit and, therefore, it needs to be inculcated in children from an early age. The faster it is ingrained, the easier it is to make it a way of life. We don’t have to wait for kids to become adults to teach them money lessons. The later you do it, the more difficult it will be to form good financial habits.

My daughter Sanaa is 16 now and she tracks her expenses and saves money for future purchases from her pocket money. She also handles her own banking. She has started writing her bank passbook more recently but we ensured that she went to the bank to get the family’s bank passbooks updated from the time she was 12 years of age.

Most of us don’t know how much money we have in the bank. It is the bank that tells us how much money we have, in the form of statements and text messages. However, in reality it is us who should be telling the bank how much money we have. Keeping a parallel track on debits and credits is of crucial importance. Over a longer period of time, this will help in knowing the cashflows throughout the year. What this would do is to make us more aware of inflows and outflows, such that in case of something going amiss, we would notice it.