Kids and money

How We Teach Our Daughters About Money (and What I Wish Someone Had Taught Me)

By Giovanni · October 20, 2026

A friend in a group thread asked me how I teach my girls about money. I started typing a quick answer and ended up writing far more than I planned. So here is the longer version.

The honest answer is that we don't do anything very sophisticated. Most of what I teach my daughters comes from mistakes I made myself.

I didn't learn about personal finance until my thirties. In my twenties I spent what I earned, saved almost nothing, and used credit cards without giving the future much thought. I was lucky not to dig a deep hole. I was also not being careful. Around 35 I got serious about saving, started reading everything I could find about investing, and fell for one idea in particular: money can buy something better than things. It can buy time, and it can buy options.

Slowly, I started passing that along to my girls.

Every dollar gets a job

The first thing we taught them is that every dollar has a purpose. We explain it with three buckets. The first holds the essentials: food, housing, insurance, getting around. The second is for fun, meaning entertainment, toys, gifts, trips, the things we want but don't strictly need. The third is for their future selves, the money you save and invest so that someday you have more choices.

Then we ask a simple question. If we have $100, how much goes in each bucket? There is no right answer. The point is that you can enjoy money today without forgetting tomorrow, and that needing something and wanting something are different feelings that sometimes wear the same outfit.

When they were around five, we started paying them a little for small jobs, like clearing the table or putting away a lunchbox. As they got older it became washing dishes or bringing in the laundry. I don't remember the exact amounts, somewhere between one and five dollars a job. Over time most of those jobs became ordinary household responsibilities and we stopped paying for everything. We wanted them to understand that not everything we do comes with a paycheck. These days, when birthday money or a gift arrives, we talk about which bucket it belongs in.

Here is the plot twist. Between the buckets and all the talk about saving, we may have overdone it. Our girls now barely want to spend their own money. They are also smart. If we can buy it, why would they use theirs? So lately, when one of them wants a toy she doesn't need, I say, "You have money. That's what the fun bucket is for." I don't want them to grow up thinking spending is bad. Money is also for enjoying.

Making investing feel less mysterious

A couple of years ago I opened investment accounts for them and we started talking about what it means to buy a stock. When you buy a share, you own a tiny piece of a real company, and some of those companies you already know. We talked about low-cost index funds, about owning many companies instead of picking one, and about why investing is something we do over many years, not a way to get rich by Friday.

Then I let them choose a few companies they actually know and like. They picked an entertainment company because they love it, a warehouse club because they say we go there far too often, and a search engine because we are always looking things up. (Those are teaching examples, not recommendations.)

Since then they have watched their accounts go up and down, and watched some companies grow while others didn't. We talk about not panicking when the market drops, and about time being one of an investor's best friends. We have also talked about different kinds of accounts, like a regular brokerage account and a Roth IRA. One of my daughters has started putting money into a Roth from her own work, and I match what she puts in.

The accounts have grown slowly. What I care about more is that investing no longer feels like a club for grown-ups.

Learning to earn, and learning to wait

Now we are entering a new chapter: learning how to earn. My older daughter landed her first job, tutoring younger kids in math and Spanish, so she is saving and investing a bit faster than her sister.

My younger daughter is a little frustrated. She wants to earn too and isn't sure where to start. I have offered a few ideas for small jobs and little businesses, and I'm trying not to push. She is still young. There is time.

I also think it matters to let them make small mistakes now. If one of them spends twenty dollars on something she ends up not liking, oh well. That is a much cheaper lesson at that age than at thirty. I don't want to make every decision for them.

The goal is a healthy relationship, not a perfect portfolio

What I keep reminding myself is that I'm not trying to raise kids who are obsessed with saving, investing or getting rich. I'm trying to raise kids who have a healthy relationship with money. Money takes effort. Decisions have consequences. Saving creates options. And it is also fine to spend on something you truly want.

We are still learning how to talk about money without making it the center of everything. It is a tool. It is not the goal.

I don't know if we are doing this right. There are surely things we could do better. I learned most of this late, so I'm simply trying to hand my daughters the tools I would have loved to have as a kid. If by eighteen they understand the difference between spending, saving and investing, can use a credit card responsibly, and know they never need to buy things to impress anyone, I'll feel pretty good about it.

And if they come away knowing that the real prize is having room to decide what to do with their time and their life, even better.

If you want to try something new this week, keep it small. Draw three buckets on a napkin with someone you love and ask where the next $100 would go. You may be surprised by the answer.

Educational purposes only. Not financial advice.