As I was asking a new client to describe her earliest memory around money, she started recalling how her parents dealt with money. She remembered how often they disagreed about managing their money, how often she remembers hearing her Dad say how “you kids are going to drive us into the poor house”. She grew up in Long Island and was raised in a Irish Catholic family with 9 kids. There was a constant sense of scarcity in her life and that feeling of never having enough stayed with her as adult and permeated her relationship with money in many ways that were unconscious. At the current age of 58, and by all intents and purposes, very well off financially, she still feels, after all these years, that if she’s not careful, she’ll wind up in the “poorhouse”.
The reason I bring this story up is to remind all the parents reading this post of how powerful your words and actions are when it comes to your relationship with money. What you say, or sometimes what you don’t say about money is being recorded by your kids for future use. How you spend, save and earn money as well as how you talk about it has a huge impact on your children’s future relationship with money.