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For children to be financially healthy, their parents need to tell them how to get there — mostly because they wish someone had told them how to get there.
Most parents agree that having money conversations with their children is important. A study from investment company Capital Group says parents today are teaching their children about money at a younger age than they were taught.
The younger the kid, the better. The study says millennial and Gen X parents are teaching their kids about money at an earlier age than their baby boomer parents — if they were taught at all.
“Most Americans who are investing for retirement today wish that someone had shared advice on saving and investing with them when they were teenagers or young adults,” the study says. “Some parents wish they had started teaching their children earlier — but often this is a lifelong learning process, and many are still at it.”
They might be having trouble because they don’t have a good model to go off of. Parents are aware they don’t know enough about money, so they’re having a hard time talking to their kids about it. The vast majority of them think there should be some sort of financial literacy taught in high school.
