Last weekend, Humans of New York featured a terrific snippet of a family who is a serious about teaching their kids necessary money lessons.
The post featured a photo of a man with his two young sons, one of whom says:
“Every week I get one dollar for allowance. Then I get to choose the section where I put my dollar. There are four sections: spend, save, donate, and invest. If I put a dollar in the ‘invest section,’ my parents give me two extra pennies at the end of every month. I’ve only used my ‘spend section’ twice! I have way over $10 in my ‘invest section.’ I used to have more but I took some money out and put it in my ‘donate section.’ We used to it to buy food for people who don’t have much money in their ‘spend section.’”
Followers of Humans of New York took its Facebook feed to share how impressed they were with this family’s approach to personal finance, saying:
This is the perfect way to teach children compassion and understanding that not everyone is as fortunate as they are, while also helping them to grow up financially responsible! You’re doing a great job as a father. – Daniel Theodore Fischer
and
What a beautiful little soul. Parenting WIN. Not people who are “less fortunate,” not people who “made bad decisions,” not people who are homeless, addicts, lonely, broken, or poor. People who have less in their spend section. YES. – Jessie Lynn
The post has earned more than 813,000 likes and nearly 97,000 shares on Facebook. Furthermore, it shows how to teach children the value of money, which is an incredibly import lesson for parents to impart.
Anecdotes like this support CNN Money’s findings from a survey last year that found the main way people say they learned about investing was from a family member or trusted friend.