Your childhood affects your money habits

I wish to start off by asking "What is your earliest memory about money in your childhood?" Maybe it was putting coins in a piggy bank, parents arguing about money matters, people knocking doors asking for rent etc. Your past holds the secret key to unlocking the reasons why you are either stumbling or strutting in your money life. It is your “Money Imprint”, the lessons you learned early that formed your hardwired operating system which have become your “normal”.

Now, what lessons did you learn from your parents? Those lessons may have been buried in day-to-day behaviour. If you're a parent now, without you knowing, you may have unconsciously putting your "money imprint" to your children. For example, the way you purchase things, swiping on credit cards during grocery shopping etc. Parents around me don't often bring up money matters with their children. Money lessons are presumed to be learnt when their children grown up. You may have learnt about currency and counting in school, but not about managing money. ?If you grew up with the notion that it’s vital to show the world that you are successful, chances are you might spend more than you should in order to live that imprint. If you grew up understanding that money is a tool and that gratification can and should be delayed until an appropriate time in the future, chances are you make decisions that support financial security.?

I would say, my whole childhood mostly happened around issues of money. My late father used to be a business owner who specialised in manufactured aluminium and glass framed materials, business was good as you could rarely found anyone doing that 40years ago, but not until he fall into gambling habit. Eventually business closed down. He had to start all over, but I would say my father bounced pretty fast and started his own fruit stalls after couple of months, something he had not done before. He woke up at 3AM every morning to prepare, he learnt to make soya bean drink and make rojak as one of his stall specialty. My mother was a seamstress then, she brought home additional materials to sew till midnight, and we would pull our mattress to sleep around her sewing machine every night. During school holiday, we helped in the fruit stall, selling and packing fruits to the customers. The family was in a struggling environment, hoping to survive everyday with 3 young children.

I also remembered this one incident when my late father fall ill, unable to work, and one night my late grandmother brought me along to my aunty's house (she stayed with her parent in law) to get some rice home for cooking. It wasn't a pleasant experience, and I remembered the unpleasant facial expression of her in-law. I guess my grandmother brought me along so that other will sympathise of our situation and help us. The rice we brought home that night, we cooked porridge as normal meals for a few days.

When my father passed away, my mother worked very hard as a single parent, taking care of 3 children, and my late grandmother. I saw my mother struggle, she had to juggle between taking care of us and earning a living. It was hard to mention about money especially when come to school fee, allowance etc. We didn't attend any extra classes, like computer class, we didn't go to any tuition classes, as we were afraid to add burden to my mother.

All these events, are mainly because money is not there. In my early years of working, I was also struggling with money. I spent on things I have wanted but have never had a chance to get it when I'm a child. I will always find a way to earn more to buy more, but never thought of planning ahead for life unforeseen events and eventually ruin my plan. That until I become a financial consultant, that I started to learn about planning my finances ahead, and delay gratification.

Financial planning is not complicated, but it is not easy either. The ability to plan for your financial future, including both expected and unexpected changes, and stay on target to meet your goals requires forethought and discipline. In layman, financial planning is about managing all matters related to money starting from planning it ahead of time whenever possible.

With the childhood experience which were there to remind me, it has also become an important task to start teaching my children about money, knowing how important money can either enhance or ruin a family. Do revisit to "your earliest childhood memories about money", relates it to your current perception about money, and make necessary alignment for betterment of your financial future.

Teaching money to children is not that difficult. This is how my husband and I teach our children:

• Daily pocket money for school day -We share with them that their current role is a student, they don't have earning ability yet, so pocket money is given by parents on goodwill as an emergency fund for purposes like if they need to make phone call using the public phone, to buy extra food when hungry after class. And before they bring this money to school, teach them to put aside some money to save. Ask them how much they want to put aside, and guide them accordingly.

During this pandemic time, as classes are conducted online, we didn't give them pocket money. My eldest son did asked the reason, we told him, pocket money is on good will basis as shared earlier, and when you play your role, or work for people, sometimes working from home could also means, less pay or no pay at all. So, we can only justify their effort through their exam result, and we add on a little extra to their reward per A .

Save before you spend. No one lack spending power, but the POWERFUL ones save before other matters.

• Delegate house chores to them. Tell them that it is everyone's responsibility to make sure the household is safe, clean and happy to live in. Monitor them for a while, until we know they'll take the initiative to do so. Like my youngest boy is assigned to refill the garbage bin with new plastic bag after my eldest boy takes the garbage to throw every evening, so we remind him for a while, and observe. Rewards them whenever there are consistent efforts in doing good job.

Everyone has a role to play. Reward comes to those contribute, and it's incidental.

• Family discussion. We always have a family culture to have breakfast together on weekend. Usually we will share about market, our business, and household income and expenses with them. So my children know what we do for income, and what we have in our planning either a family trip or a big purchase. Just this morning, we share about the different about private limited company and public listed.

Educate them. Arouse their interest about money. Let them get use to money topics.

• Start investing. Both children have savings account in bank, piggy bank at home, and unit trust investment account. We set up an "A fund"- - when they score As in their exams, we reward them money for each A they score, and let them decide where they want to put it.

Be their advisor, and let them decide placement of income earned/saved, like how an adult does.

• Sharing the pie. Friday night is our family free-and-easy night. Children get to play right after classes till 11PM, so they have something they look forward every week. And on this night, we usually have dinner ordered. We usually ask if any of them would want to share the bills, any amount.. they share according to their affordability. Let them be the boss, once in a while.

Let your children spend their money under your supervision. Only then, you have the chance to correct their spending pattern.

• First pay check. Start sharing about how children to plan about their income and expense when they have their first pay. Share with them about the first few major purchases in life, like buying a car. Feed them knowledge like, paying deposit, interest rate, calculation of car loan etc.
• Household expenses. To introduce them to the real life expenses, like how much rental if a similar size of his room in this area, tell them how much they're expected to contribute when they're an income earner etc. Prepare them early.

The above are some of the things we do to introduce money to our children, and hopefully to better prepare them at young age. If teaching children about money is important to you, it's deemed to be done well.

Plan what matters.