Talking to your children about money can be a complicated conversation. Bobbi Rebell, author of Financial Adult Release, joined TheStreet to talk about her tips and tricks to help teach kids healthy financial habits.
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Transcription:
CONWAY GITTENS: How can we better talk to our children about money?
REBEL BOBBI: The first thing you should do when you want to talk more with your children about money is to listen to them, right? Look for opportunities to start a conversation based on what is happening in their life that is relevant to them. So listen to them and ask them, what is your goal? So one of the things that my book focused on empowering financial adults was a goal that my oldest son had. I wanted to buy him an apartment. For her it was the right decision to own property at a young age. That was his goal. A lot of people, that's not their goal. Alright. It may be something else. So we talked a lot about how to get there, and we figured out not only how to calculate, well, if she had a two-year schedule, this is how much she had to save over that two-year period every week. . And I had an Excel spreadsheet. He changed his major in college to a higher-earning major so he could do that. He made specific decisions about how much he was going to spend going out with friends and I was so sad that he missed out on some things.
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But it was important and this is an interesting turn for her. He also made sure to improve his credit score so that when he applied for a mortgage he would qualify. And that's something we don't always talk about with kids. We tell them not to go into debt with their credit cards. But we don't talk to them often, not just about the things you can get when you pay your bill on time every month, like points, cash, free stuff, privileges and all that. But we don't talk to them about the importance of having a good credit score to be able to get better conditions on so many things in life, whether it's your first car, your first apartment, or simply being able to get better credit cards. , those things are really important.
The other thing I would say is to mention things as they happen in real life. Even if you roll your eyes. And an example of that is with my youngest son, I remember he stubbed his toe or something and we had to go to the doctor and it was December and I said, well, while we wait for the doctor, I said Well, at the Less financially, this is good news because I rolled my eyes, but I said, we've exhausted our deductible, so this won't cost us much. And he said, Mom, I know, I know, I know. And I started and he was like 11 years old. And this poor kid, I started explaining to him and he said, I understand. And then he told me how health insurance worked, which was amazing. And the lesson of this is that your children learn a lot along the way and don't underestimate, don't underestimate, I should say, how much your children really know and how much they are learning from listening to your good and bad conversations. in the family and only in life. They are smarter than we think.
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