Financial Literacy for Kids: Money Lessons Should Start Young

By Gregory Keer

Growing up in a southeast Los Angeles neighborhood, Alicia Mendiola and her siblings were raised in a household where frugality ruled. Her parents, Mexican immigrants, didn’t have much money and knew that living within their means meant a brighter future for their large family.

“My father had pride in having perfect credit and never bought what he could not afford,” says Mendiola. “Fast-food was a luxury. Everyone took turns getting new shoes, and sometimes your turn never came up. After years of living in housing projects, my father bought us a home because he had good credit.”

Mendiola learned from her parents’ attitude towards money. The single mother struggled to put herself through college and support her daughter, Irene. But today Mendiola is an assistant professor of child development at East Los Angeles College and owns a condominium in Pasadena. Despite the temptation of easy credit, Mendiola never got into debt.

Mendiola taught her own daughter the same lesson. Once Irene entered college, Mendiola gave her daughter a fixed amount of money to spend. The budget taught her daughter how to “prioritize her purchases,” she says.

Collecting Debt

According to recent surveys of American families, many kids growing up are getting themselves into debt before the age of 21. It seems the lessons that Alicia Mendiola learned about money while growing up aren’t the ones being passed on by parents these days.

 “I had one father come to me who’s the president of a private bank and say it was easier to feed the tiger, to just give his daughter money, than to try to teach her how to manage it,” says Joline Godfrey, author of Raising Financially Fit Kids and a clinical social worker.