Whatever you demonstrate to your children on a daily basis about how you manage and spend your money is giving them the opportunity either to choose to do what you do, or not.  The period of development from birth to seven years old is referred to as the imprint period. It is the period of their life that children copy what people do in the world around them without conscious awareness. The people they spend most of their time with are who they will most likely choose to copy or model.

Who did you spend most of your imprint period (up to seven years old) with? With whom did your spouse spend most of their imprint period?

Realising this modelling happened for you as a child, really important questions to ask and thoroughly consider include:

• What did you model from your parents (or significant adults in your life) about money?
• Which decisions did you make to purposefully NOT model things from them?
• Are you still modelling from them?
• How is that working for you?
• Did you choose new models along the way?
• Did your new models for financial management improve you financial situation?
• Which of your financial management habits and strategies are helping you move toward financial freedom and which are holding you back?

Whatever models you have chosen to use in the past, the great news is that it is up to you who you chose to model from this point forward. Choose the behaviours around money you want your children to see and do in their future. Just make sure you check in and see what results the people you choose as models are achieving for themselves before you consciously make the effort to start learning and doing what they do!

Here’s a great example, a friend has a retail business and her 3 year old daughter loves to play shop. She greets the customer, thanks them for their purchase and asks the customer how they’d like to pay - cash or credit? When the 3 year old girl is playing the customer, she realises she doesn’t have enough money and so she goes to the wall and punches in her PIN number to get ‘money out of the wall’. Where do you think she learnt this behaviour?

There are many strategies like these to consider when teaching your kids the value of money. For the next piece of the puzzle, check out our "Teach Your Kids the Value of Money" e-book.