One of the most useful skills you can teach your children is financial literacy. Usually parents start with giving their children an allowance and working with them on saving money for a desired toy or other special treat.
One mom on TikTok is doing things a bit differently — having her seven-year-old pay rent, electricity, and bills.
User @craftedandcozy explains that this parenting “hack” has been very helpful: “I have a seven-year-old. He has a daily task list that he must complete on a daily basis. Should he complete everything on his task list, he gets a dollar per day.”
“At the end of the month, he realizes that he has bills to pay. He pays those bills to me. He has his rent, he has electricity for his room, and he also has his internet for his iPad,” she said.
“He then understands that throughout the month, he has two buckets. He has his ‘fun’ money and his ‘bill’ money. It is up to [him] to categorize his money and where he’s going to put it into those buckets before the end of the month.”
She adds that she doesn’t do anything with his money except put it back into his savings account. She says that this has taught him how to be responsible with money and shared an image of her son’s “bills.”
Some parents praised her for getting her kid started on financial literacy early, while others said that age 7 was a little too young and that kids should have some time to just be kids before starting to worry about bills.