Teaching my kid to fish

[Account Closed]

Im sure you heard the chinese proverb: You give a poor man a fish and you feed him for a day. You teach him to fish and you give him an occupation that will feed him for a lifetime.

I have a 13 year old and an 11 year old, who already know how to fish, and I want to teach my boys the ins and outs of real estate investing. Im currently having discussions with 13 year old that he has a choice to either get a job flipping burgers at Mcdonalds (there is nothing wrong with that) for $1000 a month (working 16 hrs a week at $15 an hour) or helping me manage one of my building (currently 12 units total) for $500 a month.

Any advice or easy reads to pass along the journey im about to take my kids on?

[Shiloh Lundahl]

@Account Closed I am a strong believer in teaching kids about money and work at a young age. It usually takes people a good 5 years to learn how to manage money. So I start my kids off when they are around 4 years old so that by the time they are 9 or 10 they have a good grasp on the basics of how money works. My older kids are now 13, 12, and 9 and they have all saved up enough money to go on trips to Costa Rica and Paris, France (they have to pay for half of their portion of the trip). We are on vacation right now and they have all saved up $30-$50 for souvenirs. 

In our family we give our kids an allowance each week of $3 a week. This is obviously not enough for them to buy the things that they want but what it does is it teaches them how to manage money because they have so little to manage. It also make them have to find other ways of earning money outside of their allowance. My oldest daughter paid for a babysitting and CPR course on her own accord to be able to charge more to babysit. My 12-year old son started a garbage business and my 9-year old daughter does some acting. 

I think parents can do a lot of harm by overpaying kids to do things. They can steal their kids’ drive and lessen their need to learn how to budget if the the kids have enough money. In the parenting classes that I teach I suggest to parents to pay their kids “not enough.” Whatever the kids need, make sure it is less than that so that the kids have a drive to earn more so they can learn how to budge to get what they really want.

When it comes to teaching kids about real estate, I think that is a great idea. Over the past 6 months I have created a business with each of my oldest kids and have purchased a property with each of them. They are learning how find an investment property, how to run numbers, and how to manage a property. To be honest, I do most of the work right now but they are learning. The property should be able to pay for a year or 2 of college when they get older, or they can learn how to reinvest it. 

I don’t control they way my kids spend their money. If they want to waste it, then I’m fine with that. I let my kids make bad decisions with money so that they can learn what if feels like to waste money and then not have money to buy the things they really want. Currently each of my kids have a couple hundred dollars in the bank from money they have earned and saved. 

Teaching kids about money when they are young gives them several years of making mistakes with money so that by the time they at an adult they already know how to manage money well. In my opinion, it beats the alternative of having kids wait until they are 18 and leave the house to learn how to manage money when they have credit card companies influencing them to go into consumer debt.