1 – Have your children get a job. Preferably self-employed. Two of my children are running a garbage route. I am guessing that they will have stories and a work ethic that far exceeds their peers.
2 – Teach your children to invest their money and the value of a dollar saved. My youngest child has $6000 from money invested from collecting aluminum cans. He is 10 years old and it is in a Roth IRA (all of the money was “free” money from money people leave on the street for us).
3 – Teach them about the value of investing and tax free growth. Use the story about the “King of Silver Dollars.” At $8.5 million, the compound rate of return is about 8%. At 10% it would be in excess of $250 million dollars. I tell the kids that the difference is the cost of fee based asset management, which runs usually at one or two percent per year.
4 – Let your children know that if they do the right things, they will be successful. It is a law that has been explained to us in “The Strangest Secret” by Earl Nightingale.
