Let's Play Money

Episode #10: The Terrible Things That Happen When We Skip Teaching Kids About Money: +Heartwarming Moments That Change Everything

• Coach Mara • Season 1 • Episode 10

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0:00 | 20:46

What really happens when kids aren’t taught about money?

In this episode, Mara takes a closer look at the quiet, real-life patterns that can follow people for years - often starting in childhood. From a conversation with a woman in her 70s to young adults struggling to earn and manage money, these stories show how early experiences shape lifelong habits.

But this isn’t just about what goes wrong.

You’ll also hear heartwarming moments from kids who are learning money in a different way - through simple, real-life experiences that build confidence early.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  •  How early money experiences stay with us longer than we think 
  •  Why many young adults struggle with earning and decision-making 
  •  The generational patterns that shape how we think about money 
  •  Simple, everyday moments where kids can begin to learn 

If you’ve ever wondered when or how to start teaching your kids about money, this episode will give you a new way to think about it.

Reference in episode about the Farmers Market episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2468148/episodes/18638483

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SPEAKER_00

Hi everyone, it's Mara, author of The Little Books of Big Business and creator of the Let's Play Money program. I want to start today with a thought. Most adults can trace their money habits back to something that happened when they were young. Something they were told or not told or just had to figure out on their own. And sometimes those moments turned into patterns that lasted for years. Today we're talking about the terrible things that can happen when kids aren't taught about money. And the heartwarming moments that show how that story can change. Let's jump in. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so excited. Today I am recording podcast number 10. And it's been a bit of a journey as I launched the podcast last year, figuring out how to do it, the technology behind it. I've had some amazing guests on the podcast so far. I've recorded some of the podcasts on my own. And I'm really feeling more and more excited to talk to you, just talk to you directly. Today, the topic is the terrible things that happen. And I want to start by just framing what I mean by the terrible things that happen when we don't teach kids about money. Starting with the definition of terrible. So the word terrible describes something exceptionally bad, unpleasant, or causing fear and distress. Well, imagine feeling that way about money for a long time. Maybe fear about money, stress about money, or just even it being unpleasant because it was never talked about, or maybe one thing happened in childhood or young adult life. And I just want to get to the bottom of that terribleness and see if we can unpack it a little bit. Because it's really terrible when we have stress about money. And in my opinion, and what I see happening in the world, there's not a lot that's going on to change that. There's not some fairy godmother that's waving a magic wand saying, okay, if you just do this with money, that will make it easier. It's actually getting harder, it's getting more stressful, it's getting just with the technology, it's getting confusing for people. So I want to unpack the terrible and then I want to talk about what I see on the flip side, the heartwarming of what's happening. So let's let's just get into the terrible first. Let's get it really out in the open so we all know what we're talking about. I spend time out in the world talking to families, parents, grandparents, talking at conferences, working at vendor booths, doing different things, and people come up to me and tell me their stories. Was doing a conference, I think it was about a year and a half ago, with a bunch of senior women, and I ask them to share, write down. I have little yellow slips of paper. I asked them to write down their first money memory on these little yellow slips of paper. Most people have early money memories that are somewhat pleasant, maybe that first dollar that they got to put in their piggy bank or they earned a little money mowing a lawn or babysitting or something. Usually the first one is somewhat playful and pleasant. But I had a lady come up and thrust her yellow slip in my hand and let me know all about the terrible thing that had happened to her as a young teenage girl. She had the opportunity to go on vacation with a girlfriend and the girlfriend's family, and her mom gave her some money. And she was really excited she was gonna get to buy a souvenir or whatever she was gonna do on this vacation. And this would have been, you know, this woman was in her probably mid to late 70s, so this was certainly a good 60 years ago. That money that she got, she was very careful with it. She spent about half of it and she brought the rest back, feeling really proud of herself. She had done a good job with her money and showed it to her mom. And what did her mom do? Her mom took it back from her. And she was so impacted by that moment that she told me from that day forward everything she did with money, she made sure she spent all of her money so that no one would ever take money away from her again. One experience that this young girl had turned into a lifetime of how she approached money. That's a terrible thing. Now I can imagine as an adult looking back on that, I might say, well, maybe times were tight and that mom needed the money and needed to put some groceries on the table, or had just given it to a loan for her to take and use what she needed, but there was no conversation about the money clearly with the mom and daughter. And so it turned into this terrible event that cascaded throughout her whole life. I can tell you that there is a lot of that going around. I've talked with other people who have had sisters that are elderly that never learned to spend money. I have widows that I have heard just heart-wrenching stories about the husband passing, and they have absolutely no idea how much money is in the bank, that someone had a car loan or a lease that they didn't know about. It's just it's really frightening, very stressful. Those are terrible things. I believe that's very, very stressful. I was thinking about this sort of generationally. These are older women that are telling me these stories. And so I started thinking about my mom who's a boomer, and I'm a Gen Xer, and my kids who are Gen Z, and just how this sort of lays out over the course of the generations. And one of the things that can be very challenging is that those different generations each have their own feeling about money, the way money is being handled. So, for example, a common pattern for that great generation, our older generation, is there was the Great Depression. I remember going to my grandparents and they recycled every bit of tinfoil and cottage cheese container, and they were very careful with what they had, and that fear of losing money, of not having money, of and and money wasn't available as it is today. Everything was much different valued. Things weren't, you didn't just throw it away and buy a new one, right? You kept it. That was a common generational piece. And so my mother, who was raised in that household, she was taught money from people who were fearful of not having enough money. Everything had to be saved, everything had to be careful, right? So the boomers, some of the common patterns the boomers had were they had to work hard, you had to be loyal to one company. You may hear stories about your parents or grandparents talking about, you know, stick with the company, stick with them for 30, 50 years, you're gonna get the pension, the gold watch, and that doesn't really happen anymore. So what we believed was gonna happen to the next generation, terrible things happened that didn't come through. Also, some things that happened to the baby boomers is they had limited exposure to investing beyond the basics, less financial education was happening. I'm not sure exactly that there was financial education happening before that. So if anyone can show me that that was happening, I'd be super excited to know about that. So then there's the Gen Xers, people like me who were taught to be independent. I was really taught to save and to work hard, and that was translated down from that boomer generation to be self-reliant, but there was very little guidance. I adore my parents, loving parents, but my brother and I recently were sitting at a table talking together about some money patterns that we saw in our early lives, and there was little guidance. We both made choices about education, careers, car loans, things that are young adulting type things, but there was just a sense that we would figure it out, and we both made mistakes, and it just was a stressful, challenging time. It was, it was, I don't want to sugarcoat it. It was it was terrible some of the things that we made mistakes on that if we had had just a little bit of financial education or conversation with other people could have easily been avoided. So now we move on to the millennials who had major financial crises with the recession of 2008. Some common patterns for them were really heavy debt and a big, big anxiety around money, just going out and finding the job, getting lost and not being able to have a lot of available career opportunities at the time. And then into the Gen Zers who have gone through COVID, their whole life has become this digital experience, information overload, everything is fast. And when you're a kid, the thing that you miss the most, the terrible thing that I really, really, really see happening right now is that kids are missing these foundational moments. They don't get to handle cash and feel the weight of what $10 or $20 in their hand might feel like after mowing a lawn or doing babysitting. Everything is tap and pay and swipe, it's all hidden. So there's no real foundational piece. And through all of these generations, the big terrible, terrible thing is no one's teaching it, no one's talking about it. So there's really an underlying core level of stress that everybody's feeling about money. And so what I just want to kind of sum up about that is these patterns, these money patterns, they don't just go away, they live on through generations. Money is learned or not learned, typically at home with the people that were around. It's something that doesn't happen in just one day. We don't just say, hey, it's Saturday, I'm gonna teach you about money, I'm gonna, you know, show you how to catch the ball, swing a bat, and we're gonna practice it a few times. Kids get more instruction on how to play sports and the ongoing, how to be a leader, how to participate, than they ever do, ever do about money. And yet, money is one of the most consistent things that they have throughout their entire lives, all the way up until their 70s, like some of these women that I started talking about. So the shift is this, it doesn't have to be the final story, and that's why I write stories about kids who are confident and learning about money so other kids can learn from that. In my world that I'm out working with kids, I see the shifts starting to happen, and I want to share some of those heartwarming stories so you can see that it's not just all terrible, there are things happening out there. One of the things I see happening is with the farmers market programs, and I've done a completely other podcast about the farmers market programs. If you want to watch that, I'll drop the link in the show notes. When the kids go through our farmers market program, they learn entrepreneurship, they learn some basics about earning, about handling money, about how much the products cost to make, so some budgeting, and ultimately if they make a profit, then they can make some choices around saving or investing. And so it's just a micro moment where they get some learning, but it's a special moment where the parents get to come alongside the kids in a playful, joyful way and have some conversations. There are mistakes that get made. I talk to the moms and dads and grandparents of those kids, and they'll feel a little angsty about my kid, you know, made $20 but immediately spent it on all the other kids' products. That happens. But what a better way to learn than a soft mistake of spending $20 versus sending $200 or $2,000 somewhere else. So little mistakes get made, conversations can happen, and then what I see happening is those conversations continue. It's a building block. Some of the kids are going on to do more things with other little micro businesses, finding ways they can earn money. I've seen them at other markets, they'll start their own little Instagram accounts and they're growing and thriving. And it's really heartwarming to see how parents are taking it just really seriously and making it really fun and playful for the kids to learn about money. I also see the changes happening just by bringing the topic up in schools. I get an opportunity to go into some of the grade school classrooms. Typically, I'll read a couple chapters from a book, and the first thing I'll ask the kids in the classroom is anybody working? Who's got a job? And a lot of them raise their hand. They are working at home, doing chores, maybe they're doing some babysitting or some pet sitting, and they are serious about this fun thing that they get to do, earning money, and they have so many questions and they want to know how to get the word out about their services, how to make more money. It's just this really heartening special time when they're they're ready to be in the world and learn about money. I get so excited every time I get to go into a classroom. One of the classrooms that I went into, we did an extra activity where the kids got to create a farmer's market environment, but it was a very easy paper type one where they were making products basically with pens, paper, cutting them out, selling pictures of cupcakes or skateboards rather than the physical products. And the teacher let me know that one of the kids had kind of pulled her aside and said, you know, I don't really like coming to school every day, but if school was like this, I would want to come every day. And I just know the difference in that money moment that that kid had. It got his attention. It was something real life skill that he wanted to learn about that he knew was part of his world. And it was a heartwarming moment that I know that those kids are really starting to get a little bit of a taste of learning about money when they're kids. Another place that I'm seeing some great stories is when I work in organizations. I have some of my friends, other business colleagues that are volunteers at the Boys and Girls Club. And last year, when we were in the Boys and Girls Club, it was a monthly program going in and delivering some of the content after school. And these kids were asking good questions about insurance. They wanted to know about life insurance and just things that you don't think that they are even aware of. It was really fun to see their level of interest. One of the young girls wanted to be just like the gal that was volunteering an insurance agent. She was clear she wanted to have a remote job and she wanted to have a dog, and she wanted to be just like my friend Crystal, who came in and was volunteering. So the kids are seeing themselves in the business adults, and they're wanting to emulate that. And that is a really heartwarming place that when we give kids the opportunity to see how we earn money to just pull back those curtains, it's really making an impact. So these are simple, small things, and yet they're a big deal. They move us from that terrible feeling of the money being snatched away because we didn't do it right to the yeah, it's not always perfect, but I know what to do. And now when I start to become a young adult and I'm really having to make these choices about where I'm gonna live, getting my first car loan, deciding to spend money on college or pick a trades career, that conversation can start to happen with the parents, and it becomes a language that we're speaking. We're moving away from the terrible, putting our head down in the sand and just hoping our kids make it to having a language to speak with along with it. I want to tell you also about one other girl that's a really special character in my world, and that's Kat Casey. Kat Casey is an 11-year-old girl who started her own brownie business. And if you know my work, you'll know that Kat Casey was just someone that I made up in my own mind, and I wrote a story about her. The kids in the elementary schools often want to know if she's real and if any of the kids in my stories are real and they're not. Just in my my heart, my heartwarming imagination, Kat Casey did a bake sale and she made a batch of pumpkin brownies, a recipe that she found in her mom's recipe box from her grandma. And she got an order for 500 pumpkin brownies for the Halloween spectacular from the cafe in the small town that she lived in. And the story goes on to share how she learned about figuring out how much the cost of the ingredients cost to make 500 brownies. It's not just a couple of eggs, it's a couple dozen, right? She learned all about costing things out. She learned from her grandpa who bought her some piggy banks, which she called Kitty Banks, because her name's Kat. Her grandma had some stamps, she created her own logo, her branding. Kat was surrounded by her family, her local community to help her learn about money, and that's really what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to share some heartwarming stories about kids that are learning about money so that other kids can learn from the kids. So if you haven't had a chance to meet Kat Casey, there is a free download available on the website. Feel free to go grab that and read about Kat. She's my first character, my first real special girl that all of this started from. So I always like to share about Kat. The big idea here is that terrible things can happen when we don't talk about money, but it doesn't have to be terrible. It can change and shift into something that are just small and micro moments that can really shift from the fear and the stress into the fun, the play. And we just have to really acknowledge that if we don't lean into that, it's going to be terrible. And it's really important that we know that. So I encourage you to be aware of what's going around in your world. Think about the patterns that happened in your family, old thoughts that you might have about money. When you babysat or mowed a lawn, did you get cash? Did someone Venmo you money? How did you figure out how much money was worth? And how were you making purchasing decisions? How are you helping kids make those decisions? Are you talking about those? Are you going to the store, going on vacation, talking about them? So what version of the story are you writing for your kid? The terrible one where they go into debt for college and they can't transition and they have low esteem around money? Or is it the one where they're making early mistakes but they're finding these memorable moments that they can really lean into for a lifetime? That's the big question. And I hope I can shine a little bit of light and help you move forward with more of those heartwarming stories. If this episode stirred something for you, that's not a bad thing. Because the truth is, most of us were never taught about how money actually works. And those gaps don't just disappear, they show up later in ways that can feel confusing, stressful, and even a little bit overwhelming. But the heartwarming part is this those patterns can change, and they don't have to change with one big lesson. They change in small, everyday moments with our kids, conversations, choices, little opportunities to try, earn, and learn. That's what I care about, and that's what I share here.