Telling your kids about mistakes you have made is not always easy.
Still kids really seem to enjoy hearing and learning from their parents.
In this article we are continuing on our journey designed to aid you in teaching your kids about money management.
I have covered many other points in previous articles: Start As Early As Possible; Change the Way They View Money; Get Rid of Allowances; How Much is Enough; Establish a Spending Plan; Let Them Manage It; You Must be Able to Say, "No"; Savings Will Save Them from Disaster, Giving it Away Will Help Them Grow, and Tell Them About Your Choices.
This article focuses on using your life learning to help you children be more successful.
I suggest you employ the aforementioned steps and the steps at the end of this feature for a more successful plan.
Tell Them About Your Choices: Have you made a mistake in some of your spending choices? Maybe it was a "Get-Rich-Quick" plan that didn't work out so well.
Have you made some right choices regarding how you spend your money like refinancing the mortgage so you can get it paid off earlier and save several thousands of dollars? Let your kids know how these choices impacted your life.
The goal is to provide your children with road signs that will help them navigate this journey with fewer mishaps.
Sharing your personal successes and stumbles with your children will help them begin to understand the value of thinking through decisions; to consider the long range benefits and consequences.
As with all of these steps, make them age appropriate.
You wouldn't talk to a six year old about mortgage interests.
But, you might talk to one about spending too much at the store and running out of money so you can't go to the ice cream store.
Kids are naturally interested hearing about their parents lives and will learn far more from them than some hypothetical examples.
For most of us, talking to our kids about the mistakes we made in the area of money is a lot easier than sharing from other areas of our lives.
Don't only focus on the right stuff.
Be sure they have an opportunity to learn from the things you got wrong as well.
Most of us learn more from our mistakes than from our successes.
A personal example: We hired a man to install a fence for us when we first moved into our new house.
We found him in the yellow pages, he seemed like a very honest man, he had a license to do the work, and he gave us a bid that was just a little lower than the other three bids we got.
After we paid him half upfront - it is not unusual for contractors to get a third or half up front - he kept giving us excuses for why he wasn't starting the work.
Then he stopped answering the phone.
The end of the story is his license had expired the month prior to our hiring him and he eventually filed for bankruptcy.
We lost our money.
The lesson here is to not only verify credentials of a contractor, but verify they will be current for the life of the job.
Do this before entering the contract.
Our son knows this story and many others like it, both good and not so good.
I hope they help him avoid the same mistakes.
Not only will you be helping your children avoid costly mistakes later in life, but they will appreciate your confidence in them.
Our son still calls us for advice about money and many of life's other challenges.
He and his wife just bought their second home and are renting out their first one.
I believe he picked this up from us when we saw us do the same thing several years ago.
I believe you can develop a similar relationship with your kids.
Talking with them helps foster it.
You are almost at the end of the journey.
There are only two more very valuable lessons to go: Teach Them About Compounded Interest and Don't Give Up and Don't Give In.