“Prepare Your Children for Financial Success,” Liahona, June 2021
Blessings of Self-Reliance
Prepare Your Children for Financial Success
Parents who teach their children sound principles of money management are helping them establish a financial foundation that will bless their lives.
Photograph from Getty Images
Even before Marc Deo de la Cruz joined the Church in the Philippines, he wanted to serve the Lord. Shortly after his baptism, he was excited to learn that young men and young women can be called to serve full-time missions.
“I immediately knew that was something I wanted to do,” he says.
When he turned 18, however, a financial crisis struck his family. They wouldn’t be able to help him pay for his mission, so if Marc wanted to serve, he needed to find a job and start saving money.
“I decided to work extra hard to earn all the money for my mission expenses,” Marc recalls. “After a long while of working and saving money, I finally submitted my mission papers.”
Out of necessity, Marc learned two important keys to self-reliance: working and saving. These two principles, coupled with paying tithing and budgeting, can play an important role in preparing young people for future financial success.
Paying Tithing
Teaching our children the principle of tithing is a great place to start, especially when they’re young. Why do Latter-day Saints give 10 percent of their earnings to the Lord? Part of the answer is found in faith in Jesus Christ, the first principle of the gospel. As we teach our children faith in the Lord and obedience to His commandments, let us also teach them how paying tithing blesses the Lord’s work and kingdom. Let us teach them how paying tithing builds trust in the Lord. And let us teach them the Lord’s promises to faithful tithe payers (see Malachi 3:10–12).
Working
Children who learn to work at home will be better prepared when they start working outside the home. In a talk that the Church later published as a pamphlet, Elder Marvin J. Ashton (1915–94) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught: “One of the greatest favors parents can do for their children is to teach them to work. … I believe that children should earn their money needs through service and appropriate chores. I think it is unfortunate for a child to grow up in a home where the seed is planted in the child’s mind that there is a family money tree that automatically drops ‘green stuff’ once a week or once a month.”1
Saving
Teaching our children to save money is as easy as helping them to spend less than they earn. And to help them spend less than they earn, we can help them focus on something they will need money for in the future—a mobile phone, a car, a mission, or a college education. A good goal for children and youth is to save 40 percent of what they earn. To help them begin saving, share with them this wisdom from President Brigham Young (1801–77): “If you wish to get rich, save what you get. A fool can earn money; but it takes a wise man to save and dispose of it to his own advantage.”2
Budgeting
Our children will have an easier time paying tithing and saving 40 percent of what they earn if they learn to create and use a budget. Budgets can be as simple as planning and managing expenditures on a notepad or as detailed as using a spreadsheet or a computer program. For budgeting ideas, do an online search or consult the Church’s Personal Finances for Self-Reliance manual. Budgeting allows our children to set financial goals, plan and track their saving and spending, and avoid debt. Because “creating and following a budget is an act of faith,”3 we can encourage our children to pray for inspiration to use their money wisely and to plan for the future.
Setting an Example
Parents who live these principles themselves and make family finances part of their family councils show by their example the wisdom of managing money. Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin (1917–2008) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles declared: “Teach your children to follow your example. Too many of our youth get into financial difficulty because they never learned proper principles of financial common sense at home. Teach your children while they are young. Teach them that they cannot have something merely because they want it. Teach them the principles of hard work, frugality, and saving.”4