Tips to help raise financially empowered kids

(InvestigateTV) — A survey by financial services company Empower found that 57% of parents wish they had talked more about money with their children.

Stoy Hall, Founder and CEO of Black Mammoth, a financial planning and wealth management firm, said there’s no better time than now to start those conversations.

Research from the University of Michigan shows that children begin forming money habits as young as five, proof that it’s never too soon to start teaching financial literacy.

“My wife grew up with in a middle-class family, and they didn’t really talk about money,” Hall explained. “They’re just well-off. And she knew that things were taken care of. Me, opposite, right? I knew we didn’t have money. I knew my mom was stressed and worked 100 hours a week type thing to make us survive. We still didn’t talk about money either.”

To break that cycle, Hall and his wife hold monthly money meetings with their children, openly discussing financial decisions, feelings, and the reasoning behind their choices.

“When we go to make financial decisions and stuff, we’ll bring them in and say, ‘hey, this is how much this cost,’” he explained. “We had to work at ‘x’ to get to this. And this is a decision that we’re making as a family, right. So, they can understand it. But also, we’re teaching ourselves and learning still how to communicate even, you know, as a married couple.”

He urged parents to be transparent and show them what’s going on at any age.

He also recommended using the Greenlight app, which helps children learn to earn, save, and invest. Parents can set up s, automate allowance, and even assign payments for completing chores like taking out the trash or unloading the dishwasher.

The American Library Association and FINRA Investor Education Foundation offers a free program called ‘Thinking Money’ to teach kids age-appropriate financial topics.

Copyright 2025 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.