Page 58 - HaMizrachi # 23 Sukkot Simchat Torah 2020 USA

GENERAL INTEREST

Rabbi Elisha Aviner

Teaching Our Children About Money

hildren who are able to work 2. To value money earned through (pun intended), but the other is our
for payment will experience hard work and honesty. own personal example. How do we
Cthe feeling of earning an honest treat our money?
wage. They worked hard – sometimes 3. Not to be too miserly or
very hard – and for long hours, for a wasteful, to be wary of spending For example, if we tend to express
measly minimum wage. Nevertheless, money in vain and to save and our approval of the wealthy, with a
they may learn that money does not happily spend whenever the need touch of not-so-hidden envy, we are
grow on trees and they are likely to arises. transmitting a strong message that
value the money they earned through However, what does “whenever the accumulating money is an ideal. Or if
their own efforts. need arises” mean? What need? we buy gadgets and products because
everyone else is buying them – and the
Our role is to educate them to become Whose need? Who decides what’s neighbors have just bought one too
fond of their money and not to waste needed and what’s not? – we are exemplifying the ideal that
it. To encourage them to save and I suggest the answer is a priority list. social status is a priority value and one
to spend it on worthwhile items and What’s more important in life and can buy it through material goods. Or
causes. what’s less important? For example, the children see us succumb to social

Too much fondness for honestly- the relationship between games and pressure. And if parents fight with
their child on every cent he or she asks
earned money can of course lead to books, between cognitive skills games for, even when it’s justified, they are
miserliness. A miser is someone who and trendy, fashionable pastimes, and educating towards stinginess.
loves his money so much he cannot when is there room for chesed and
bring himself to part with it. Even if tzedaka. From the moment a child If Mom and Dad are always arguing
he sleeps with gold coins under his has his or her own money, one should about money, or bemoaning their lot
pillow, he himself is likely to live on educate them to give ma’aser kesafim and saying “we can’t afford it” or are
a minimum and certainly won’t give (a tenth of their earnings) to charity. just never happy with what they have,
very much charity. Before children earn their first money, the children absorb all that and could
At the other extreme is wastefulness. they largely receive it as a gift. Without conclude that they just got dealt a bad
parental intervention, they could place deal and life sucks.
As the Rambam writes (Hilchot De’ot little value on money because it’s so These are of course negative examples.
1), there are those who chase money, easy to come by. Act in the opposite way around money
and whatever they have is never and your children will learn how to
enough, and there are those who make That’s why giving pocket money treat it in a healthy, positive, grateful
no effort to earn what they need. without an educational context and generous way.
You have scrooges and savers and can be very dangerous. Even those
spendthrifts and philanthropists. Is parents who give their child a few In short, be thoughtful of how you are
there an ideal balance though? dollars to “go buy yourself a treat,” behaving and thinking about money,
are risking their youngsters placing and consider how you want your
How does that translate into financial little value on money, demanding children to relate to it. Work out the
education in our times? What do more, or developing negative and self- principles you want to teach them and
we want to teach our children about destructive attitudes to cash. then practice what you preach.
money?
In my opinion, our educational Rabbi Elisha Aviner teaches in yeshivot
1. That it’s a means and not an function is not solely to lay down the hesder and founded an organization to
end. rules. Sure that’s one side of the coin help parents with adolescent education.

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