The Best Way To Teach Kids About Money
July 16, 2006
If you want to teach your children about money, forget the lectures -- and focus on telling stories.
The goal: to pass along your financial values by relaying family stories that illustrate the money lessons you think are most important.
Does this really work? It sure has in my family.
Telling Tales
I have two older brothers and a younger sister. My brothers, who are twins, run a landscaping business together. My sister is a nurse. In many ways, we're quite different.
Yet we share a common trait: We are all incredibly careful about money. Until recently, this puzzled me. True, our parents are cautious spenders. But the four of us didn't grow up hearing long lectures about the virtues of thrift or the value of investing in stocks.
So why are we such good savers?
Earlier this year, I was chatting with Holly Isdale, head of the wealth advisory group at Lehman Brothers in New York, and she mentioned that family values are often passed along in the stories we tell. And that was when the light bulb went on.
My two brothers, my sister and I grew up hearing about the financial missteps of my maternal grandfather, who had been born into an aristocratic English family. In the 1940s, he and his four siblings each inherited what today would be millions of dollars.
My grandfather's siblings quickly frittered away the money on high living and fast cars, while my grandfather -- a former cavalry officer and clearly the more serious one -- turned his hand to farming. But he was, in truth, a gentleman farmer, with precious little business acumen.
Indeed, every so often, my grandfather would be forced to trade down to a smaller farm, thereby freeing up capital that could then be used to run the next farm. Eventually, with much of the money gone, he and my grandmother retired to a hamlet in southwest England, where he helped pay the bills by working part time as a gardener.
If it sounds like a sad story, it isn't. My grandfather loved horses and dogs and delighted in the English countryside, and he always seemed to have an easy laugh and a playful glint in his eyes. Nonetheless, my siblings and I heard the stories about all the money that had been inherited and saw just how little was left, and the message was loud and clear.
Feeling Depressed
Not everyone can have an aristocratic grandfather without much business sense. But for years, millions of families had something even more compelling: the Great Depression. For adults who lived through the 1930s, it was a powerful lesson in the importance of financial prudence, and many recounted their tales of struggle to their children.
"I had Depression-era parents," says William Bernstein, an investment adviser in North Bend, Ore. "And their message was that you saved every last dime you could. But the characteristic is weakened as it's passed on from generation to generation. Our kids aren't as cheap as we are. And their kids will probably be spendthrifts."
There are, of course, many reasons for the collapse of the U.S. savings rate since the mid-1980s. But "the disappearance of parents from the Great Depression has to be a major factor," reckons Mr. Bernstein, who notes that the savings rate is far higher in fast-developing Asia than in long-prosperous America. "The longer you've been rich, the less likely you are to save."
Talking Cure
Today, instead of tales of the Great Depression, we are bombarded with stories of the shopping mall. Don't want your kids to spend their adult lives struggling with credit-card debt? You've got to start telling tales.
When my parents talked about my maternal grandfather, they weren't setting out to teach us about money. It was just another family story that was told.
Still, there's no reason you shouldn't be more methodical about it. To that end, here are five pointers:
? Choose your stories carefully -- and, dare I suggest it, possibly embellish them just a little.
Talk about what you did to earn money as a teenager. Discuss your financial difficulties during college and when you entered the work force. Talk about how grungy your first apartment was. Tell your kids how you got the money together for your first house down payment and how you messed up by buying highflying technology stocks.
"Make sure your kids know what sacrifices you had to make to get the lifestyle you now have," advises Lehman Brothers' Ms. Isdale.
? Set a good example. Talking about the importance of thrift won't do much good if your weekends are spent at the mall and your evenings are devoted to the shopping channel.
Enlist grandparents, suggests Carrie Schwab Pomerantz, chief strategist for consumer education at San Francisco's Charles Schwab Corp. Together with her father, Schwab Chairman Charles Schwab, Ms. Schwab Pomerantz wrote a book entitled "It Pays to Talk."
"There's an innate tension between parents and children that's not there between grandchildren and grandparents," she says. "Because of that, grandparents can possibly have a greater positive effect. If they're talking about walking to school in the snow every day, the grandkids are maybe more accepting of that than if they heard it from their parents."
? Skip the long discussion and go for frequent short stories. "We have a number of clients who do the big family chat," Ms. Isdale says. "They might show family photos and tell the stories that go with them."
But, she says, you'll probably be more successful if you weave your family stories into everyday life. "You don't want to be a broken record with your kids," Ms. Isdale says. "It can't be 'Today is Tuesday, we've got to do philanthropy.' "
? Don't get discouraged. Your family storytelling won't transform your children's financial habits right away. In fact, they might seem to be paying no heed to the family lore, Ms. Schwab Pomerantz says. "Kids may roll their eyes at their parents. But when they grow up, they're telling those same stories to their kids."
教孩子理财的最佳方式
谁都喜欢奇闻异事。
当你教孩子理财时，千万不要说教──不如讲讲故事。
目的：通过讲述家庭理财故事来阐述你认为最重要的理财经验，将你的理财价值观潜移默化地传授他们。
这能奏效吗？至少在我的家庭中可以。
讲故事
我有两个哥哥，一个妹妹。我的哥哥是一对双胞胎，共同经营著一家景观美化公司。妹妹是护士。我们在很多方面都存在著巨大差异。
但是我们有一个共同点：对花钱相当谨慎。我对此一直迷惑不解，直到最近才发现了其中的奥秘。没错，我们的父母也是勤俭节约的人。但我们并不是在有关勤俭美德和股票投资技巧的长篇大论中长大的。
那么为什么我们都成了节俭的人？
今年年初，我和雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)驻纽约的理财顾问部门负责人霍利?伊斯德拉(Holly Isdale)探讨了这一问题，她说，家庭价值通常都是在晚上点著灯随便聊一些事情的时候形成的。
我们在成长的过程中经常会听到有关我的外祖父在理财方面栽跟头的故事。他原本生于英国贵族家庭，四十年代，他与他的4个兄弟姐妹各自继承了在今天看来相当于几百万美元的遗产。
外祖父的兄妹们很快把钱花光，过上了拥有名车豪宅的日子。而曾经当过英国骑兵队官员的我外祖父却明显谨慎得多──他用这笔钱投资了一家农场。然而实际上，这位颇有绅士风度的农场经营者却缺少了点商业头脑。
事实上，我的外祖父不得不一次次将大农场换作小农场，最后，随著资金逐渐减少，他和我的外祖母在英格兰西南部的一个小村庄退了休，在那里他还要靠作兼职园丁来维持生计。
这听上去有点凄凉，不过事实并没有那么糟糕。我的外祖父喜欢马，喜欢狗，过著英格兰的乡村生活，他自然乐在其中。他的脸上总是带著轻松的笑容，眼睛里闪烁著快乐的光芒。不过，无论如何当我们听到这个资产萎缩的故事时，其中的道理是不言自明的。
感受萧条
并非每个人都有一个拥有贵族气质但却缺乏商业头脑的外祖父。但是很多年来，数百万个家庭经历了比这更加触目惊心的事情：大萧条。经历过三十年代大萧条的父辈们都会有一个关于勤俭节约的教训，而且很多人一次又一次地将这些故事讲给了他们的孩子们。
“我的父母就经历了大萧条，”俄勒冈州North Bend的投资顾问威廉?伯恩斯坦(William Bernstein)说。“他们总是认为，你要尽可能攒下每一角钱。但是随著这种品质一代代传下去，它已经弱化了很多。我们的孩子可没我们这么节约。估计他们的孩子就更加大手大脚了。”
当然，自八十年代中期开始的美国储蓄率下降可能有很多原因。但是“缺少经历过大萧条时代的父母可能是其中的一个重要原因，”伯恩斯坦说，他写道，在高速发展的亚洲，储蓄率要比很早就进入繁荣的美国高得多。“你成为富人的时间越长，就越不愿意储蓄。”
谈话技巧
如今，大萧条已经被人们渐渐遗忘，耳边听到的全部都是对购物中心热火朝天的讨论。但是，你不想让你的孩子们在成年后总是受信用卡债务的困扰吧？那就赶紧给他们讲讲理财的故事。
当我的父母讲起外祖父的故事时，他们并无意向我们渗透关于理财的观念。这只是众多有关家庭成员的故事之一。
不过，这并不是说你不能系统一点。归结下来，有5点问题值得注意：
--精心选择你的故事──斗胆建议一句，有可能的话加上一点修饰。
讲讲你十几岁时的赚钱经历。说说你在大学时期或者在工作后遇到的财务困难。告诉你的孩子你是怎样把钱攒下来付第一笔房屋首付的，是如何通过买一些一飞冲天的科技股发财的。
“要让你的孩子知道你能有现在的生活是为此付出了代价，”雷曼兄弟的伊斯德拉说。
--举一个恰到好处的例子。如果你把周末都用来逛街，把晚上的时光都献给了购物频道，那么费多少口舌来大谈节约都是毫无意义的。
旧金山嘉信理财(Charles Schwab Corp.)的首席策略师卡丽?施瓦布?波梅兰茨(Carrie Schwab Pomerantz)建议，调动一下孩子的祖父母。波梅兰茨与她的父亲、嘉信理财董事长查尔斯?施瓦布(Charles Schwab)共同著有“It Pays to Talk”一书。
“孩子在父母面前天生就具有反抗情绪，而祖父母与孙辈之间却不然，”她说。“正因如此，祖父母的话可能更有效。如果由他们来讲述中学时每天踏雪求学的故事，或许比从父母这里听来更容易接受。”
--不要长篇大论，不妨分成小段来讲。“我们的很多客户喜欢和家庭成员长谈，”伊斯德拉说。“他们可能会拿出家庭照片，如数家珍地讲述著其中的每一个故事。”
但是如果你能把家庭故事编织到每一天的生活中，效果可能更好，伊斯德拉说。“你肯定不希望你的孩子把你当成破唱片。那么就不要说‘今天是周二，我们谈谈慈善事业’之类的话。”
--不要泄气。你的故事不可能对孩子的理财观产生立竿见影的影响。事实上，他们可能看上去对家庭故事毫无兴趣，施瓦布?波梅兰茨说。“父母说话的时候他们可能会眼珠到处乱转。但是当他们长大时，他们甚至有可能将同样的故事讲给他们的孩子听。”
Jonathan Clements
