April 2022 | Lina Banytė-Surplienė
How would you describe a spoiled kid?
It might not be very easy to decribe but once we see such a kid, we immediately recognise – that‘s a spoiled one, aren‘t we?
How could we define the spoiled kid?
Let me define the spoiled kid in the following way:
- The kid does not understand how much effort is needed to achieve something (it seems that he or she lives in another universe!)
- has no desires and no goals
- does not value things (tends to lose them regularly and does not seem to worry about that)
- is likely to spend all the money immediately
- always asks to buy someting and has limited understanding of how much things cost
If you checked at least 2 bullet points of the above, there are bad news and good news.
Bad news is that most of the modern children are spoiled based on the definition above (but it might also feel relieving that you are not the only one).
Good news is that chances are that you are not doing everything what you could to raise the anti-spoiled kid – and that means that you can easily change the way you and your kids behave.
How could we unspoil our kids?
After talking to hundreds of parents who are facing common „spoiling“ issues, I made a list of parents‘ behaviors that raise money smart (anti-spoiled) kids and a list of parents‘ mistakes that make kids spoiled.
Both lists are quite extensive but they have something in common. Please take a look at the diagram below.
If we want to raise money smart (anti-spoiled) kids, we need to give them 3 pillars of experience:
- real-life experience with money, e.g. giving them limited amount of money and showing them what happens when money ends
- open talk about money, e.g. telling them a story when we made a silly financial decision ourselves and explaining what we have learned from that, or explaining why we chose to buy this bread and not the other one
- last but not least – behaving in a way in which we teach them
Now, we want our kids to be in the sweet spot in the middle. This is the place where financially free kids grow up.
What could go wrong?
If we miss at least one of the ingredients, we will not bake a good cake:
- if we give real life experience and open talk, but do not show good example – kids would not believe in us and are likely take over our habits (and not trust our words)
- If we give real life experience and show example, but do not talk about that – kids may feel misguided and overwhelmed
- If we give open money talk and show example, but do not give real life experience – we deprive our kids of practical learning experience, so the learning will be limited
But how could be ensure that we give all that to our kids without feeling overwhelmed ourselves?
I have some good news for you – I am preparing something for you – and will share that with you next week. That “something” will help you teach kids about money without spending too much time and energy on that. Does that sound exciting?
In the meantime, if you have not downloaded it yet, get your free copy of “10 signs you are raising money smart kids” here: