About

Founder of “Raising free kids” Lina Banytė-Surplienė has worked in finance and tax consulting for 16 years and has held senior positions at PwC, one of the world’s largest audit and consulting firms. This helped Lina not only to have a good understanding of the financial system, to experience various businesses from the inside, but also to gain experience in conducting training, and also leadership.

Leadership in life begins with leadership at home. As the mother of three children herself, Lina started her project “Raising free kids” in 2019. “Raising free kids” is intended for parents who wish to raise self-confident and critical children. Using the skills accumulated in her professional career, Lina regularly conducts online seminars for parents about children’s financial education, has designed a special 5-week training program “Financially free kids” which she delivers herself. The program helps parents become more confident that they will successfully prepare their children for the future.

Lina has been interested in the topic of children and finance for 4 years now – she is educating her children about money, reads related literature, shares her experience in the Facebook group “About children and money”, collaborates with various publications, participates in radio shows and webcasts.

Lina herself has tried different ways with her children, made mistakes, tried again and made mistakes again until she found effective ways to teach children about finance.

My Why

I created “Raising free kids” for two reasons.

First, I like teaching kids. We have three of them – Faustas (10 years), Elžbieta (7 years) and Konstantinas (1 year). Every new thing they learn — riding a bike, swimming, laying on a bed, or reading — is like a small miracle to me. The list of things I want (and, in fact, have!) to teach them is endless.

Second, one day I suddenly realized that my children were… spoiled. They have too many toys and too much fun. I realized they don’t understand the value of money and they don’t really want anything.

Then I realized that I was not very successful in teaching my children financial freedom, to put it mildly. And this childhood experience can cause financial hardship for my children in the future.

I don’t want this to happen to my kids. And I don’t want this to happen to your kids either.

I have a dream – to see me and your children grow up financially free.

That is why I have started to take an intense interest in this area and want to share my knowledge and experience with you.

My kids and family

My eldest Faustas is very interested in money. He has already tried to make money in various ways – by selling lemonade to neighbors, sweets to his classmates, berries to passers-by, or playing the violin at school. I see the fire of entrepreneurship in him and I hope he will keep it ignited it in the future as well.

My daughter Elžbieta is mainly interested in dancing and pets (cats and dogs). I don’t follow stereotypes, so I am sure I can give her every opportunity to discover herself.