How do you talk to your kids about money?
+ what does money smell like?
Hi. I’ve just been for a walk by the beach and managed to beat the rain home. Hope your Monday is being kind.
A couple of things I’ve read recently have made me worry wonder about how I talk to my kids about money.
In last week’s interview, Jessica Abel said her mother “inappropriately” shared her anxiety about money with her. I then read a post by Leonie Dawson in which she said “I learned the word bankruptcy long before most kids do. When I was a kid, bankruptcy loomed over my family, ever present and threatening.”
You can read about my money history in this post, but if you’re in a hurry, a quick summary is that my parents were fine until, in the mid 80s (when I was a teen), my mum was diagnosed with MS and then my dad was made redundant (because his job became obsolete). From then on, they struggled. And from then on, all my money memories are bad.
My mum worried about money constantly and I can remember getting up in the night to find her crying about it. She was my best friend and we talked about everything (or almost everything), but maybe she shouldn’t have talked to me about this? Maybe it’s the root of all the money issues I’m still trying to untangle?
And yet, I talk to my kids about money. I tell them when I don’t have enough, when I can’t afford to pay for something. I tell them how hard I’m working to make more and how I’m hopeful in the future we’ll be doing better.
I’m open with them about money because I’m open with them about everything (or almost everything). And also because I’ve been trying to teach them how capitalism works (or rather how, for most people, it doesn’t). But now I’m wondering if I’ve gone about it the wrong way. If I’m creating the same money anxieties in them as my parents did in me.
Fortunately (and surprisingly to me!) they’ve both agreed to be interviewed for this newsletter, so I’ll be posting that on Thursday. Read about my parenting fails in real time!
How do you talk to your kids about money? I’d love to know.
PSA…
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Last week, I got a water meter installed. I think our water bills are too high - double what we paid in the old house - so I thought it was worth a try. And then I noticed on the United Utilities website that you can change your payment date, so I’ve pushed mine back a few days.
Previously the payment went out on the same day my ex pays maintenance and sometimes the payment has gone out before his has come in, which is stressful since I have no cushion. Little changes like this can make all the difference.
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Recommended read…
I really enjoyed this post featuring “seven creative explorations” around money. I’d love to smell the money fragrance created by perfumer Julien Rasquinet that “captures all the different aspects of banknotes”.
An interview with… Amber McNaught
Amber McNaught writes romantic comedies set in the Scottish Highlands (Under the pen name Amber Eve), and one of the UK's longest-running personal blogs, Forever Amber.
Her Substack is an awkward girl's guide to life: a newsletter for introverts and socially awkward people, which rarely manages to stay on-topic. She lives in central Scotland, where she tries to juggle a full-time writing career with raising her 5-year-old son, Max, and his imaginary friend, Shoeshubb.
What is your relationship with money currently?
It's probably the worst it's ever been, if I'm honest. The pandemic wasn't kind to my husband's business (he's a web designer), and social media has gradually killed off blogging, which has been my career for over a decade, so it's been a rough few years all round, and we've been having to rely on credit much more than we'd like to get us through it.
We're slowly starting to turn things around, but it had become painfully obvious that our old business model just wasn't sustainable any more, so we're having to look at pivoting into different areas. I'm now writing books, as well as blogging, and I've also been doing some freelancing when time allows, but it's slow progress, and I spend a lot of time worrying about how we're going to manage.
My (totally selfish) biggest fear is that we'll have to get "real" jobs, which I know I would absolutely hate: I've been self-employed for most of my working life now, and I've always said I could never go back, so I've been literally lying awake worrying that I might have to, and how we'd deal with childcare, etc. if we did.
With that said, I've always been terrible with money. I'm the kind of person whose wage is spent before it even hits the bank, and who always knows exactly how long it is until pay day, so I've never really felt like I had much of it, even when business has been good.
I dream of being able to one day do things like go for a day out, say, and be able to stop for coffee or lunch without having to mentally tot up how much money is left in my account, to figure out if I can afford it.
That would feel like success to me right now -- a cup of coffee I don't have to think twice about!
What’s your earliest money memory?
My dad was made redundant when I was around 8 or 9. He went from having a well-paid office job to having to drive a lorry for a few months while he tried to find something else, and I remember my mum sitting down and working out their budget, right down to the 10p they used to give me to spend in the school 'tuck shop' ever day at break time.
Although I knew this was happening, and that my mum was worried about it, though, I think they must have gone out of their way to try to hide how tough it was for them, because, from my perspective, not a lot seemed to change. It's only when I look back now that I realise how stressful it must have been for them, and how much I took it for granted that they would somehow be able to "fix" it.
What advice would you give your younger self about money?
Don't take the store card, even if the sales person is super-nice, and they're giving you 15% off whatever it is you're buying if you take the card. The interest just means you'll still be paying for it long after you've forgotten what it was, or why you wanted it.
(I still vividly remember the first thing I bought with a store card - it was a pair of white 'mom' jeans, back when they were popular the first time around, and I told myself I'd use the card just for the discount, and pay it off as soon as the bill arrived. Fast-forward a few years, and I was still paying off those jeans -- and they didn't even suit me, either.)
What’s the biggest money mistake you’ve made?
Other than the store cards, which I spent literally years of my life paying off, I'd say not prioritising saving. I've basically always lived paycheck to paycheck, and although we do have some savings as a family, I worry that it's not enough.
I've always viewed saving as something I'll do "When I have some spare money", but that time never seems to come (and I'm pretty sure that's how saving works, anyway!).
What’s the best thing you’ve ever spent money on?
Definitely travel. I've spent a small fortune on things like clothes and shoes over the years, and none of them have given me even a fraction of the joy I've get from walking down an airbridge or up the steps and onto a plane (and I'm scared of flying, so I don't say that lightly!).
Do you have a pension? If not, do you have a plan?
I don't have a pension (I should probably have listed that as my money mistake!), but I do have a sort-of plan, which involves getting our business to a point where we're able to earn a residual income from it without spending all our time working.
This is quite probably very naive of me, but I'm having to pin my hopes on it for now, because it's the only plan I have! (And if I manage to pull it off, I'll spend the rest of my life going around the world telling other self-employed people to learn from my mistakes and get a damn pension...)
What would you do with £10,000?
Boring answer, but I would pay off my debts, put some aside, then buy myself that stress-free coffee, basking in the knowledge that I was finally debt-free.
If you were me, what would you want to ask women about money?
I'd love to know how people learn to be "good" with it; is it something you just do instinctively, or is there some way of taking someone like me, with lifelong bad money habits, and turning them into someone who's careful with it?
I asked Amber for an interview after reading this post about how AI could destroy the business she’s been building for seventeen years.
Amber also writes a weekly money diary, which I love.
Thanks so much for having me Keris!
How to talk to kids about money is something that's been on my mind a lot lately, too. Max is very aware that we don't have much money - to the extent that he'll say things like, "Oh, my mummy and daddy won't buy me that, they don't have any money," to people, which can occasionally be mortifying. (Like the time we were walking away from a local tourist spot and he stopped a woman who was on the way in and said, "You have to pay to get in there, and my mummy and daddy wouldn't because they're not rich, you know.") I do think we have to be honest with him, particularly as we're both self-employed, so we often have to have conversations about the importance of us having time to work, but I also worry that he's growing up with a preoccupation with how much things cost, and will sometimes voice concern about how we're going to afford certain things. So, food for thought, as always!
Oh gosh, I worry about the impact I’m having on my children about money. My children will sometimes ask for something and then quickly say ‘but I can wait until payday’ or ‘do we have enough money for X?’ This knocks me for six sometimes and I really wish I didn’t have to say ‘yes you can have this, but on pay day’. I would really love to know how to talk to my children about money in a way that won’t do harm 😅