Cooking the Books podcast: How to talk to your kids about money

If you have spare cash, should you put it aside for your kids? Photo / Natalie Slade

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking The Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how to give your kids a good start with money. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Listen to "Cooking the Books: How to talk to your kids about money" on Spreaker.

Family politics is hard enough without bringing money into it. But just because it's hard, doesn't mean you can put it off.

For better or worse, most schools don't teach your kids about finances.

Money makes the world go round, but somehow our kids are supposed to just figure it out for themselves.

Never mind that roughly a third of New Zealanders don't understand compound interest, according to the Commission for Financial Capability.

Compound interest is the easiest, laziest, and most reliable way to make money, yet people are missing out because they simply don't know what it is.

Making sure kids learn the basics of money is a good starting point. Yet when money is a touchy subject, there are ways of having the conversation that are better than others.

Then there's how you should help them out if you have some extra cash.

Should you invest it? Put it into a savings account for university? Or what about a savings account for a house?

Should you even do any of that, in case coddling them teaches them to blow it all, then hold their hands out for more?

It's territory that gets tricky quickly, and the pressure of trying to give your kids the best start in life doesn't make it any easier.

I talked to EnableMe founder Hannah McQueen for the latest episode of the Cooking the Books podcast.

We talked about when to start talking about money, how to have the conversation, and the best options to invest for you childrens' future.

For the interview, listen to the podcast.

If you have a question about this podcast, or an idea for the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here and Twitter here.

Don't forget to subscribe on the Apple podcasts app or I Heart radio, to make sure you never miss an episode.