Watching Your Wallet: Age appropriate financial literacy

FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KFSN) — Financial literacy isn’t exclusive to adults.

Stockpile CEO Victor Wang says that, regardless of whether they realize it, parents are teaching their kids about finances.

“Most parents never talk to their kids about money at all, so we want to change that,” he says. “When they look at money, when they spend money, how they talk about money, how they open their bills. Are they looking at a price tag when they buy something? Kids are seeing that.”

You can help kids build healthy money habits at any age.

Wang says, “We have to get kids to learn good financial habits by getting real-world experience, and that comes from having discussions together and real-life experience spending or investing their money.”

When it comes to saving, Wang says make sure there’s a goal in place to create a tangible activity the family can do together.

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The time and effort it takes to save leads to responsible spending.

“You want them to make a mistake with $5, not $5,000,” he says. “Let them learn at an early age because that’s how we teach kids, but for some reason we don’t do that with money.”

There are even approachable ways to talk about investments.

“Especially for young kids, the analogy I make is you know if you take a seed and you put it in a jar on a shelf, a year later it’s still going to be a seed,” says Wang. “But if you take a seed and plant it in the garden, it can be a tree.”

Stockpile is a financial app geared toward kids and families, offering practical experience and talking points for investing and saving responsibly.

“One is the opportunity for growth for the future,” said Wang.

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