Parents are and should be the primary source from which children learn the values of money management, according to the keynote speaker of the Utah Jump$tart Coalition's Financial Literacy Summit, being held today in Salt Lake City.
"Study after study shows that kids learn most of what they know from their parents. That's just the way it is, and I think that's the way it's going to be," Janet Bodnar said in an interview Thursday. Bodnar is deputy editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine and author of "Raising Money Smart Kids" and the recently released "Money Smart Women."
"Parents are told to talk to their kids about sex, and they're told to talk to their kids about drugs and all of that, but not often to talk about money," Bodnar said. "But parents need to know that it's important — that the small pieces of wisdom, the small pieces of knowledge they pass to their children, really have a big effect."
Bodnar will keynote the Jump$tart Coalition summit, a financial literacy seminar for teachers. The event, in its fourth year, kicks into even higher gear this year.
"This is the first year that high schoolers are required to take a general financial literacy course" as a part of their graduation requirements, said Jodi Jones, a Jump$tart board member. "Teachers are in training, they've been training and will continue to train to gather the resources to teach these concepts in their classes. We hope this (summit) is one of those resources."
This year's summit includes workshops from 15 different organizations, including information on credit, banking, identity theft, entrepreneurship and overall attitudes about money.
Hopefully, Jones said, the summit will provide information to teachers who can use the material to teach children, who will then take the discussion home to their families.
"One of our hopes has always been that as students are learning financial matters in school that they'll go home and talk to their parents about it," Jones said. "We need parents to reinforce the things that their students are learning. We need them to reinforce it at home, to get their children involved in the family finances, to talk about it so it's more of a real-world application for them."
That doesn't mean parents need to present lectures on the U.S. monetary system or economic theory, Bodnar said. But there are plenty of ways and opportunities to talk about money matters.
The automated teller machine, for example.
"From the time they were toddlers, kids have been sitting in the back of the car watching you go to the ATM, and it'd be easy to think that there's just a little printing press back there spitting out money," Bodnar said. "But if you explain to them that the bank is like a big piggy bank for Mom and Dad, and just like their piggy bank is empty sometimes, that yours is, too, that's a simple way of telling them that the cash machine isn't an endless supply of money. And it's an opportunity to talk about why you work and the way you earn money."
While schools may provide information about money issues, Bodnar said parents are still the key to putting that information in motion and making it an active part of their children's lives.
"It's something I feel passionately about — the fact that we as parents need to teach kids about not only the value of money, but also the values of money," Bodnar said. "So that they feel comfortable and capable with money as adults ... and so that they also have the values — responsibility, planning for the future, philanthropy — that they can feel comfortable passing on to their children."
E-mail: jnii@desnews.com