Since yesterday I am thinking how to write an answer to this question asked by Galen
Do you feel giving children a grounding in financial matters is the parents' or a schools' responsibility and why? If you do it for your children how have you done so?
This is a tricky subject and I think it would be great if every school system in the world included financial education as a compulsory subject from the early years. This would be wonderful because then our parents would have learned from their parents and taught us who would also teach our children. If financial education were taught like writing and reading, its learning would be guaranteed, but unfortunately this is not the case and I don't think it ever will be.
MONEY IS POWER and to teach how to manage it optimally would be to share with many people the power that is in the hands of few. It depends on the political will to make financial education part of school curricula and since it is far from being a reality, it is up to the parents to assume the teachings in financial matters.
In my case, I never had an adequate education on the subject, and I believe that few in our country do. We have had to acquire it in our own way. The reality that each one of us lives in shapes and limits the scope of our learning, but at the end of the road no matter the obstacles. Money is the same for everyone and learning how it works and behaves will give us the same advantages and the possibility of adapting to our realities. Whether we are successful or not depends on our ability to put into practice all the knowledge we have acquired.
What we do have to see as an obligation is to try to transmit to our descendants as much knowledge as possible. A long time ago I stopped working in an office from 8 AM to 5 PM, I did it early, but I have not achieved much, I had a lot of desire but few tools. I'm still learning, it's never too late, I think I just recently became really financially conscious. I have taught my daughter, along with my husband, the best we have been able to in financial matters. Our advice to her has been as follows:
The first thing is to better yourself, knowledge opens many doors. The money earned must be invested so that it pays dividends. You cannot accumulate debts, nor spend on unnecessary things, always have an emergency fund (you have to be prepared for any contingency) and above all try to do things as best as possible, without causing damage to third parties and always abide by the law. Strive to achieve financial independence as early as possible and on the way to that goal help others to do so as well.
I don't think I am an expert on these issues, but I hope my advice will be of some use to my daughter in this increasingly turbulent and competitive world.
A profitable week to all of you.
All rights reserved on the text and images, which are of my authorship unless otherwise indicated. I use DeepL for translation because my English is very bad 🤭.