Is being good with money taught or genetic

[Ivykaty44]

Can you teach a child to grow up and be good with money - or is it in the genes?

I have 2 dd's, both have been brought up in the same household. One has money in her pocket and it burns a hole until she can buy buy buy, the other is much more sensible and saves her money and spends a little.

I think it's a bit of both TBH - the best thing you can do is model a good example and not encourage debt. Some people do spend everything as soon as they have it - as long as you are living within your means, it's not a problem (ie if you make sure all the bills come out first and then spend the leftovers, but not things like "Oh, I'll just get this and this and ... argh the rent is due, I forgot!" as that way you end up in debt. I am like this and I have one bank account for bills etc and another for spending, I put all my money I need to cover direct debits at the start of the week/month, and have the rest in my other account. I then buy food for the week and anything we need, e.g. new shoes for DS. Anything left over is for bus fares, swimming, coffees, chocolate, emergency milk, all non-essentials. I have an overdraft but try not to use it.

I don't know how old your DDs are but it might be an idea to start introducing the idea of budgeting, perhaps by giving them each an allowance and saying they are responsible for buying their own toiletries and/or clothing from now on. It's really best to do this way before they can legally get credit as it teaches that you need to spend the money on what it needs to be spent on first. You have to be really tight and not give them any extra, even if they run out of toothpaste/shampoo etc. (Would probably stretch to lending tampons etc - am not that mean)

Then the other thing is making sure that as soon as they are 18 they don't go out and get a credit card/loan/overdraft as soon as they can just for supporting an impulse buying habit. So don't give in to requests for credit for something like "I ran out of money and need some more hair products" but negotiate on "I want to go on this school trip/to see this band/to get a laptop for school work and I won't have time to save up" - something big that they can see is valuable.

So you are good with money - are your siblings, if you have them?

I'd go with being bad with money is genetic but you can be taught to be better with it.

In my family, my Dad is careful, my mum was profligate. I am careful, my sister is profligate (I fully take after my Dad in most things, my sister after my mum) and my brother is so completely money-oriented it's scary (he takes after my Dad's brother.)

My mum even used to try and tell my sis to control her spending, but since she couldn't do it herself, that kind of went unheard. My sis is now in the position of having to penny-pinch, penny count and not have a credit card of any kind as it's too dangerous.

Perhaps your best bet is to at least warn them of the pitfalls - i.e. a credit card limit/overdraft is not free money available to spend (as some people seem to think) - it HAS to be paid back at some point, and with interest if late! That bloody book/film about the Shopaholic is the most godawful pandering to this line of thinking - I hate it so much!

No, I am not good with money - I can't keep track of it and that is why I have all my direct debits as set amounts, and the money going into a separate account which I know I can't touch. However once I have spent my "spare" money I don't go looking for more. My sister never really spends money and has probably twice as much in her savings account as I do. (We are both quite young - she still lives at home)

I tend to avoid things like credit cards, loans and overdrafts as I know I would spend it all little by little and end up in huge debt. But as Martin Lewis says, not all debt is bad, bad debt is bad. So if you have debt, you should know what it was spent on, e.g. a car, conservatory, wedding. If you have debts just because you live outside of your means then that is a spiral you will never get out of.

My ex was awful with money and used to feel panicky if he had less than about £100 available in his bank - so for example he'd be much happier with a balance of -£374 as long as he had an overdraft of £500, than having a balance of +£27 and not having an overdraft. (I am the opposite and it drove me mad) When he was low on money he would just keep "upping" the overdraft until it was over £1,000, then he would buy something huge like a car and add the overdraft onto the loan for that, by the time I left him he was about £10,000 in debt, in his twenties.

I think the difference is, I learned early on that if I spent all my money I wouldn't get any more and I did go without things and learnt that I wouldn't die from it - whereas my ex never got pocket money and always asked for things and was told "yes" or "no" - usually yes. I don't think he really knew the monetary value of things.

Taught!

My parents were useless with money, my brother is useless with money.

I save like there's no tomorrow lol