Teaching grandkids about money through classic books
Amazon, Fishpond, Mighty Ape and The Book Depository have dozens of books written specifically to teach your children about money.
Many have the dull, syrupy feel of books designed to encourage kids to use the potty.
But there is a rich vein of money wisdom in the classic children's books, which are far more engaging, especially for older children.
In these books, money matters are central to the stories, but aren't the point of them.
Despite their educational value, it's is not hard to see how some modern financial products could have saved a great deal of heartache for a great many famous fictional children.
Thrift and self-reliance
These are themes in many children's books.
The Laura Ingalls Wilder series (including The Little House on the Prairie fascinate kids with their detailed descriptions of a life of careful thrift and make-do. They are the children's equivalent of the adult tale of self-reliance Robinson Crusoe. E Nesbit's The Railway Children and Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes also tell of children from hard-up families who still lead lives of interest and achievement.
The children in these books play their part in keeping households afloat, both through self-denial, but also entrepreneurship and work.
The English Civil War classic The Children of the New Forest also majors on the themes of children rising to the challenge. Thought eh girl characters are weak, the descriptions of the commercial transactions the children make to supply their needs after they are orphaned and left homeless do not bore young listeners, who are hungry for such detail.
Saving
In Ballet Shoes, Pauline Fossil, the eldest of three performing sisters, helps fund her nearly broke household afloat by acting in plays.
A condition of her licence to perform is that a portion of her earnings are banked, and start amassing. Pauline would love to give contribute more to the household, and save less. It's a quandary that gets a good chewing over. It also provides a clear example of saving while limiting consumption.
The children speak of learning to not want things they cannot have while money is tight, something many modern children have to learn.
Debt
Again, Ballet Shoes provides the best example. Debt may be a modern plague, but it is almost impossible to live without these days.
The Fossil children borrow money from their boarder, Mr Simpson, to buy a dress to go to auditions in. The security for the loan are their necklaces- one of pearls, one of turquoise and one of coral- which are precious to them, if not particularly valuable.
They sign a contract with Mr Simpson setting out the terms of the loan. A copy of the contract is even printed in some editions. The lesson: debt is for things that lead to greater prosperity, not luxuries.
Spending
When it comes to frivolous spending, Mr Toad of The Wind in the Willows is the go-to character. Toad's squandering of his family fortune on luxuries like caravans, boats and cars provides a shocking lesson.
Capital is for investing and sustaining families in hard times. Toad's father knew that, and so does Mr Badger, who leaves Toad in no doubt of his opinion.
Going to the opposite extreme of extreme meanness, there's no going past A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, though people who only know it from TV adaptations may be surprised at how much gets left out on screen.
Spotting a scam
Paddington Bear is a financially-minded bear, who's very careful with his pennies, but he does fall for a fake share scam in Paddington at Work. He buys shares in the Portobello Oil Company from a sharp operator who tells him there is oil under London's Portobello Road. The evidence is an oil stain on the road, which the scam-artist says is oil seeping up from below. All ends well, but Paddington, who visits the Stock Exchange, learns a valuable lesson.
Family trusts
Had Cinderella's father set up a trust before his unfortunate demise, the trustees could have kept the evil stepmother's covetous hands off the family wealth, and Cinderella wouldn't have needed a fairy godmother and prince to rescue her from poverty.
A trust endowed by Captain Crewe with enough money to ensure Sara Crewe had a viable future would have resulted in The Little Princess being a quite different book. A great deal of ill-usage would have been avoided in Miss Mincham's boarding school for girls in London. After all, he was heading to India, and the chances of him not coming back were pretty high.
Life Insurance
How different the lives of many fictitious children would have been if their parents had life insurance. Take Roald Dahl's James Henry Trotter from James and the Giant Peach. When his parent improbably get eaten by a rhino at the zoo, James ends up miserably enslaved at his wicked aunts' house.
Many children's books kick off with the deaths of parents. It's no wonder kids wonder what would happen, if the same happened to theirs. Explain your life insurance to the kids, and see the relief on their faces.
Buying a quality home
There's only one children's book that goes to building quality; The Three Little Pigs. In a modern telling one of the three little pigs would have bought a home made from untreated timber and monolithic cladding.
What’s your favourite book to read with your grandchildren?
First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
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