I believe very strongly that teaching our children sound biblical financial principles is essential to their future financial stability and success. A few years ago, I wrote a blog post titled Teaching Biblical Financial Principles to Your Children.
In today’s blog post, I would like to provide further information and website links to assist parents with this important topic. This post is not duplicative of my prior post but supplements it.
Some Bible verses that are foundational principles to your child’s understanding of money are:
1 Cor. 4:7 – “What do you have that God has not given you?” (NLT) All we have comes from God and we need to use it wisely.
Matthew 25:26-27 – God refers to the man to whom he had given a bag of silver but who did not actively do anything with it so that it would increase in value as “a wicked and lazy servant”. God expects us to be active with our use of money and work hard, not be lazy.
Luke 6:38 – “Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.” (NLT) God wants us to be generous givers, with our generosity coming from a sincere heart.
Learning to create a budget and working within its confines are vital. Money is not limitless, so children must understand that a budget helps them to monitor their income and expenses and then they must be disciplined to keep within those reasonable bounds.
Saving and goal-setting are other critical components of money management. Most experts advise to save at least 10% of your net earnings. That money should be set aside for the “rainy day” – when the unexpected happens – and also for goals – for example, to purchase an item of clothing or jewelry. As your child grows up, those same principles can be applied to making larger purchases, such as buying a home or a vehicle.
Please be sure to teach your child to tithe to your church as well. That is yet another principle that God instructs and honors and the budget should include it. (Leviticus 27:30, Proverbs 3:9).
There are many resources available for parents and the links below provide some of them.
To learn more, please visit:
https://thekingdomcode.com/about/teach-kids-about-money/
https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/teaching-your-kids-about-money/
https://www.biblemoneymatters.com/balancing-biblical-financial-principles/