Raising Financially Confident Kids

My nephew of about 13 years only thinks of yogurt and biscuits anytime he sees money, and each time that happens, I ask him whether he doesn’t have a susu box or empty milk can at home for saving money. Because if my memory serves me right, I used to save like my life depended on it during that age.

I remember how my mom used to get so surprised each time she came to pick me up from school, and I gave her money to keep for me.I mean, of course, you never give an African mother your money to keep for you, but we live and learn, right?

But then I clearly remember how anytime I wanted something, my mom would say she was going to use the money I gave her to get it for me or she was going to add it to my money. Either way, I was always very happy, and there were times I was just proud that my savings were able to let my mom’s money rest.

Back to what I was saying. I really don’t remember any financial literacy I learned from primary school to senior high, except business mathematics—that’s only if all those profit and loss lessons count. But then, we were never taught that we needed to save for rainy times. It was only once in a while that it appeared in our social studies lessons.

Aside from that, I just made it a habit of saving because I realized that each time my mom took money from me at that age, she was so excited, and she always showered praises on me.

So looking back at that time, so many years ago, and comparing it to now, when there’s been massive development and civilization, I believe students should actually be introduced to financial literacy. It’s not even that deep. Students should be made to understand that at this point in the economy, you save today, and your savings will save you tomorrow. Hold on, that’s definitely going to be my lesson topic if I were a financial literacy teacher.

Anyway, all that I’m trying to say is that one of the important things in becoming financially independent is knowing how to manage your finances. And it’s going to be great if our kids know how to do that even at early ages.

Left to me alone, a lot of things in these syllabuses would be taken away and be replaced with real-life lessons because guess what? It’s been so many years since I left primary school, and I still haven’t used a pie chart for anything in my life except cutting cake and for the pythagoras theorem. I don’t even know.