Teaching Finances- Who's Responsible

Finances is one of the most fundamental areas of human life. Navigation in the present day society requires us to understand the better ways of earning and spending our monetary resources.

Finances does not merely mean to learn how to earn and spend money. It also includes attaining the wisdom in setting up our priorities and controlling our impulses. Thus, it is an attitude that is attained over time.

While learning theoretical perspectives at school may help us gain understanding of pros and cons of various methods and view points, the application of those ideologies and experiencing their actual impact requires the practical application.

Moreover, there is no way to gain insights about how the pressure feels when you move your limbs in the water while swimming, is not possible by reading the stories on pages. For understanding the swimming and experiencing the force for navigating in the water we need to dive in the water. Education at school hardly provides such a chance.

Furthermore, as I mentioned above, I believe finances is an attitude and right decisions do not come out only by the knowledge of beneficial and harmful. Such as smokers are aware of the adverse effects of smoking but they smoke any way. The knowledge does not impact their behaviour. Similarly, understanding various theories is not likely to make us wise in terms of using our monetary resources. There is a need of instilling the behavior via conditioning and modelling.

For instance, my son was asking me to buy a toy. We looked for it online. I realized the price were far higher than we could purchase it from physical market. I refused to buy the toy online and told him to wait until we would visit the market in a couple of weeks. He was not happy but I explained to him that it was of no use to spend more money on the same quality of product that we may easily purchase in a cheaper price. In this way he bot only understood the reason but also learned to control his impulses.

Similarly, I ordered a few books lately. During a conversation , I told my son that I am intending to buy books now on regular basis. He asked me why I was not buying before. I told him, I did not have enough money before to invest on buying books so I read them online. However, I prefer reading books in physical form and now I have money to afford them now so I am heading towards it.

I went on further to explain him what I think our priorities should be in terms of expenditure. I told him I deem it important to first fulfil the needs of our health. Unless our health is stable and our well-being intact, we cannot enjoy our lives. Then, comes our workspace. By spending money on our workspace to make it cosy and sophisticated we enhance our ability to earn more.

Observing my behavior in the real life is the thing that is likely to create a lasting impact on my children’s behavior and attitude.

Therefore, I am if the opinion that giving the grounding in financial matters is primarily the responsibility of parents. The education at school may help gaining the further insights into various realms of finances. Nonetheless, parents are responsible for developing the attitude.

This is my participation for weekend engagement topic

Do you feel giving children a grounding in financial matters is the parents' or a schools' responsibility and why? If you do it for your children how have you done so? Use your own photos.

Image is taken by me via my mobile