Wealth education: from piggy banks to investment portfolios

An age-based approach for instilling sound wealth stewardship over time

Wealth doesn’t naturally endure across generations. Children need to be taught to effectively manage money. Since that kind of education isn’t taught in most schools, the responsibility primarily falls to parents, grandparents and other mentors. All children can benefit from financial education. And if you are planning to transfer assets to the next generation, teaching them how and why to be good stewards of the family wealth is even more important.

Although some financial decisions will have more significant and long-term consequences than others, generally it’s the sum of all the choices children make over many years that will determine how well they fare with managing wealth.

By starting early to educate children about money, you can establish a foundation of basic—but critical—knowledge they can continue to build and draw on for the rest of their lives.