Let’s open a thread on an important topic. There are excellent threads on the forum about saving for children and the contents of children’s portfolios. However, there isn’t much discussion about how to guide a child to accumulate wealth themselves or how to use their savings.
Recently, the topic has been widely discussed in society; Hesari reported this week that children value each other and themselves through mobile phones, and there are fears that youth consumer loans are becoming a ticking time bomb. The chairman of the Finnish Shareholders’ Association, Snellman, demanded a few months ago in the magazine Viisas Raha that society should invest significantly more effort in financial education than currently.
Everything currently gives the impression that while saving and investing are prominent phenomena, the underlying skills of sensible money management have not been ingrained in children and young people. So, where is the problem and what can be done about it? 
I teach financial skills to young people professionally, and financial matters and entrepreneurship seem to interest young people significantly more now than fifteen or even five years ago. On a general level, my subjective experience is that basic everyday skills and appreciation for work have simultaneously weakened. This all seems very contradictory. On the one hand, young people feel and understand that money brings freedom and even respect, but concrete knowledge and skills related to finances are very much lacking.
I have always tried to raise my own children with the idea that money, or equivalent benefits, must always be earned. If not every time through direct work, then by taking good care of their everyday affairs and considering others. The idea, of course, is the traditional “money doesn’t grow on trees” ideology. Just like with adults, money has a guiding effect on desired behavior in children’s cases too.
Of course, children cannot and, in my opinion, should not be coldly conditioned to input-output thinking like adults. This requires every parent to reflect on their own relationship with money and finances, and to make value choices about which parts of their own preconceptions and knowledge to pass on to their offspring. Although finance and money are often considered “cold” matters, they are excellent tools to use in upbringing.
Through finance and money, one can address valuing things (do I spend my money on a smaller thing now or save for a bigger thing later), ethical emphases (e.g., material vs. immaterial acquisitions), and planning and valuing one’s own time and its use (do I play a video game or do something more goal-oriented).
My own children are not yet of investing age (the eldest has just started school), but my idea is that at some point, a portion of the child’s savings would start to be put into funds and stocks, so that the child can also be involved in making investment decisions. Learning motivation and interest in the subject grow from one’s own choices. This will hopefully carry through to youth and later adulthood.
I would love to hear how others perceive the role of finance and money in upbringing, and especially how you teach financial skills to your children?
In addition to my own children, I also have a personal stake in the matter because I am involved in a company that creates financial education tools for parents, schools, and early childhood education. We have just launched a learning game (Taloustaituri, hopefully this much subtle product placement is allowed), which helps primary school-aged children and younger ones to deal with basic everyday financial phenomena.
Next, the intention is to also help young people learn the skills of managing their own finances and more complex concepts, such as investing. For this too, it would be extremely interesting and educational to hear about ways tested in families’ everyday lives to handle the matter that concerns every parent, namely financial education.
So, boldly share your own thoughts and practices! 