Why We Started Putting Our 11-Year-Old in Charge of Financial Decisions

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A little extra responsibility isn’t always a bad thing. 

My son, like many 11-year-old boys, enjoys spending a lot of his time watching and participating in sports, playing video games, and teasing his younger sisters. But when he’s not busy doing those things, you might find him sitting down with me (and/or my husband) and reviewing some of our household finances.

My husband and I made the decision to share our household budget with our son about two years ago, when he was only nine. As such, my son is keenly aware of how much we spend on essential expenses like our mortgage payments, groceries, and utility bills. He’s also aware that we allocate money every month to our savings accounts and retirement plans (though he’s unaware of what our balances look like).

Because our son is now a little older, we’ve started letting him make certain low-level financial decisions. And the goal there is to empower him to make smart choices as he gets older.

Important skills to have

Many U.S. adults struggle with financial literacy. And a big reason is that personal finance isn’t a topic that’s broadly taught in classrooms.

Some states are looking to change that. Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Virginia all require high school students to take at least one personal finance course prior to graduating, according to Forbes.

But in many parts of the country, personal finance isn’t taught in schools. So it’s on parents to take matters into their own hands.

That’s a big reason why my husband and I let our son make certain financial decisions. But to be clear, my son won’t be in charge of picking our next new car (namely, because he’d have us driving the Batmobile if it were a viable option), nor will he dictate which stocks I buy with my brokerage account (because, well, he’d probably pick Nintendo without digging into its finances due to his obsession with his Switch).

But what we will do is let our son decide whether we should buy tickets to a certain event based on their cost and how much we’ve recently spent. And we’ll sometimes let our son decide if we should pay for a takeout meal versus cook one at home, depending on what our grocery spending looks like that month.

These are clearly low-impact decisions. But they serve the important purpose of teaching our son to manage money — even if that money is ours. In fact, because that money is ours, my son tends to contemplate these decisions even more carefully so as to not let us down. And that’s not a bad thing.

Talk to your kids about personal finance

You may not want to go to the extreme we do in our household and share your finances with your kids. But it is a good idea to start teaching them about personal finance once they’re old enough to understand key concepts, like budgeting, saving money, and avoiding debt. It could go a long way toward helping them become financially capable adults.

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