What My 11-Year Old Has Learned About Money

I've had quite a few conversations about money with my daughter over the years, and recently she wanted to come back on my podcast (she was 6 the first time) - she is now 11.

I wanted to know what she's actually absorbed about money, not from a lesson I sat her down for, but just from being around it. Her answers were honest, and here are the key topics.

Spending is the lesson every kid learns first

Ask any child what they like most about money and you'll get some version of what my daughter gave me: spending. No hesitation. What do you get when you spend? "Things." Toys, lollies, a day at the Ekka. Nobody has to teach a child to enjoy spending. It's the one money skill they learn easily.

Earning, investing and giving are different. They take deliberate, repeated conversation, and most of us didn't get much of it growing up either. That's not a criticism of any parent. It's just how the messaging around money usually works. We absorb spending by default and pick up the rest, if we're lucky, later in life.

Then we have habits, stories and beliefs to unlearn and change.

Teaching money when it isn't tangible anymore

When I was a kid, pocket money was actually cash.  Nowadays, even if you give your child physical pocket money, they will have more experience with the intangible forms of money (unfortunately). When my daughter went on a cashless day trip with friends recently, the old solution of handing over some cash didn't really work. Most of the places she'd actually spend it don't take it.

So we had a different conversation. Did she need a bank card? Yes, she wanted one. But wanting a card and understanding what tapping it actually does are two different things. I ended up giving her a debit card with almost everything switched off. No cash withdrawals, no online purchases, no gambling (yep, children gambling  is a growing problem). Just tap and pay, with a limited amount loaded on it. It let her participate without handing over risks she wasn't ready for.

If your kids are old enough to be out without you, this is worth thinking through now rather than the night before (which is what happened to me).

Earning, investing and giving take longer to land, and that's fine

My daughter's take on earning was better than I expected: it's not pocket money for nothing, it's doing something of value for someone else. Washing the car, doing a grocery run, taking a job off someone else's plate. That's a genuinely useful way for a kid to understand what it means and take to earn money.

Investing was a different story. She's heard me talk about it many times. Her honest answer was that she still has no real idea what it is. That's completely normal at 11. We set up an Investment Bond for her when she was born, which uses a trust structure that lets it grow with a capped tax rate, and which she can access when she's older. She doesn't need to understand the mechanics of that yet. What matters is that the conversation has already started, so by the time she does need to understand it, it won't be a foreign concept.

Giving is the one that has the most emotion attached. We do the Live Like Her Challenge every year, sleeping in our car for one night to support women over 55 facing homelessness. The first year we did it, her first question was, "What if that's my Oma?" She was already connecting an abstract issue to someone she loved. That's not something you can teach with a chart. It needs to be experienced.

The conversation matters more than the lesson

If there's one thing I'd want another parent to take from this, it's that you don't need a perfect curriculum to start talking with your kids about money. You need the conversation itself: what spending actually costs, where earning comes from, why investing exists, and what giving does for someone else. Kids notice far more than we give them credit for. My daughter brought up my own Money Pie framework before I did.

 And if this got you thinking about your own money habits, not just your kids', then reach out to me - that's worth a conversation too.