Last week we discussed money and your thoughts; there is also the emotional angle to it. For example you can be comfortable with money even though you are not yet financially free. This will be because you understand the right perspectives about money that you should. That way you will keep off from overspending, live within a budget and ensure you give and save no matter what you earn or what your circumstances are. On the other hand, if you are afraid when it comes to money issues, you will spend without thinking about the future and the consequences of your actions today or you might delay in making investment decisions.

To know where you belong you might want to ask yourself these questions:

• Can you refer to yourself as a spender or a saver?

• Do you buy, buy, buy, whether you need the thing or not? Or when you can’t even afford it?

• Do you hold onto money just for you to feel good about having it in your pocket, even though you deny yourself the things you logically know you can afford?

It is definitely ok to fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes of being wasteful and miserly, spending only what’s needed within your budget while also saving enough for future needs. In reality, however, most of us tend to fall on one side of the fence or the other. Some people have an unhealthy love of money. They’ve failed to heed the biblical caution that “The love of money is the root of all evil”. Where do you belong?

Interestingly, the emotional part of us colors what we do with money a lot of times more than the logical part. It affects us when we want to decide on issues about our monetary responsibilities. It also determines what we decide on when it comes to spending money wisely or not. Our children are not left out here. They also have the emotional side and are either spenders or a savers already.

You can, however, help your child take on the right emotions by teaching the right values about money. The word value has two meanings when it comes to money. First, values are your acts, customs and ways of dealing with things, money inclusive. Value also refers to the worth of an item in terms of money. Values work as our guidelines in life. They stand like tall trees in a forest. They help us to be fixed and strong. We don’t all always live up to the values we treasure, but that doesn’t mean that those values need to change. For example, you may highly value honesty, but you’d never tell your child that his performance in the school presentation was terrible. Or can you do that?

You have your own set of values – what you learned as a child from your parents and what decisions you’ve made as an adult. However, you aren’t the only one that teaches your child values. He also gathers values from what he is taught in school, what he watches on TV, what he sees in the movies, what he listens to on the radio and on CDs and what he sees demonstrated by his friends and their family members too. Your duty is to sort out your own values and recognize the values passed on by outside influences. This will then help you to take definite steps to enforce and re-enforce the values you want your child to adopt. After all, values aren’t inherited like the colour of your hair and the aesthetic abilities you have. Values need to be taught. Take your time to teach them now, before you know it they are all grown and set to leave home.

Photo Credits: Moodboard/Corbis

– Gbonjubola Sanni