Childhood is a time to learn about what is needed to live in the world.  It starts with learning to walk and to talk, but quickly moves on to much more.  That includes schooling, of course, but it also includes those things that only parents can teach.

How parents act and what parents consider important – not just by lecturing, but also in every day-to-day action becomes the “normal” – positive or negative – that becomes part of a child’s assumptions about the world, his or her place in it, and how he or she should act.  

One crucial part of that world is money – and in particular, how to earn it.  

Specific practices by parents can give a child a terrific head-start in life, that puts him or her at a great advantage compared to kids whose parents do not make a similar effort.  

Every child wants an allowance to spend on the things he or she wishes to buy.  What is important is to set specific chores, appropriate for the child’s age, by which that allowance can be learned.  With age, as the child grows, both the set of chores and the allowance grow as well.

Parents typically buy the clothes their children wear.  But sometime around 11 to 13 years of age, youngsters become much more aware of the clothing styles they prefer.  

When they want to take over the purchase of their clothes, the allowance they earn must be sufficient to enable that.  

If their first purchase is a designer-label fashion clothing, they quickly realize that they are not earning enough to allow a full designer-label wardrobe.  

A bigger allowance is not the solution; the young teenager must learn to budget his or her “income”, mainly by buying less expensive clothing, such as is available at stores like Wal-Mart, if he or she is to have enough clothing to last a week or more between uses of the washing machine and dryer.  

Not only is budgeting a skill he learns, but also planning.  

Your children’s friends may laugh at their inability to convince their parents to buy them designer clothes, but once they are all out of school and in the workplace, your children will have ten years of financial experience that those others around them often lack.  

That foundation is something only parents can provide, and doing a good job as a parent requires an explicit plan and making the effort to provide it.  

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