Explicit and Implicit Money Lessons from your Family

Moving around the financial triangle from Faith to Family, a whole new set of influences come into play. Have you ever considered how your family implicitly and explicitly taught you many different lessons about money? Today, I would like to share with you a couple of ways to think about that question.

1. During Childhood - Did your parents all too happily buy you whatever you wanted whenever you wanted? If so, why? Was it to please you and make up for a lack of something they did not have as a child? Or maybe your parents were experiencing guilt about not spending enough time with you and tried to cover that guilt with gifts?

Maybe the opposite was the case, and your parents would not buy you anything you wanted. Why is that? Perhaps they were trying to teach you responsibility and that relationships are more important than stuff. It could have also been that they just did not have that kind of disposable income. Whatever the reason, that surely left you with a certain feeling. Take a moment to reflect what feelings you experienced.

Understanding what happened with money during your childhood can help you to better appreciate your money values as an adult. Money values are simply the beliefs you have about the way money should be used and what it means. Often, we are unaware of our money values, and that is why we stay in money ruts.

2. Family Money Rules - Every family has a money paradigm, a way that they think about finances. It influences simple things from when to go out to eat and what clothes to buy, to the types of vacations you take to thinking about whether you should save for the future. How did your family arrive at these money decisions? What priorities did they set with the money they had? Perhaps there were no priorities and that was the money rule of your house. Now, take some time to brainstorm your family's money rules. How do they influence the way you interact with money now? Which of the rules needs to be changed and why?

One of my family money rules that I learned from my dad was to research like crazy before buying a big-ticket item. I got the impression we didn't have to go for the cheapest things, but we wanted to find something that was going to last. While I will admit I don't do loads of research before I make similar purchases now, I do think about long-term value instead of just getting something cheap.



I could go on and on about the family money rules, but I think it is best that I stop here and let you chime in on your own family money rules. Which ones have helped you and which ones have hurt you?

Feel free to give me a call to talk more at 980-275-1627.

Ed Coambs

Edited by Reena Arora of Arora Media, connect on Facebook

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