Money Lessons From Dad: What Stuck, What Didn’t, What Comes Next

When Money Advice Doesn’t Land

My dad told me to save for a rainy day.

At the time, I was a 10-year-old hellbent on spending every cent of my allowance on bubble gum, glitter gel pens, and teen magazines with centerfold posters of Hansen. A rainy day wasn’t on my radar. So I nodded, ignored him, and assumed adult me (the college graduate version) would figure it all out later.

Spoiler: Adult me did not figure it all out later.

In my twenties, I had credit card debt, emptied two old 401(k) plans when switching jobs, and in college, borrowed more student loan money than I needed to cover tuition and books.

That was survival mode, tinged with youthful recklessness.

I didn’t think of my dad often while doing it. But upon reflecting, I often do. Not because he’d have been truly mad, but because he would have just blundered and thundered (harmlessly) and racked with disappointment.

He passed away when I was 15; otherwise, my financial wake-up call may have come long before my thirties. Yet I didn’t miss the values he tried to instill; I just didn’t absorb them until much later, and after mistakes had been made.

And now, I’m trying to figure out how to pass down money values to my own kids, ages 6 and 4. As I muddle through, one lesson is crystal clear: watching your parents and successfully managing money is not the same thing as learning how.

Don’t miss: Save, Grow, Value: Lessons for Children’s Financial Literacy.

My Dad, the Builder-Saver

My dad was frugal to the bone, but not in the cold way people sometimes imagine. He was affectionate, funny, and involved, and his kids never doubted for a second how fiercely we were loved.

He just didn’t believe in debt, or buying new cars, or calling a contractor when he could do it himself. He paid off the mortgage within three years (before kids) and made all of our home and auto repairs, including building a deck, shed, and second bathroom with his own two hands.

He hated owing money.

Once, after watching an exposé on 20/20 about grocery store pricing errors, he made my brother and me write down the list price on every product before checking out — to make sure it matched the register.

It did, after making our grocery trip three times longer. And we never did that anti-scam exercise again, but that was my dad: thorough, skeptical, deeply principled.

And while I didn’t always understand it then, I now see that he was trying to show us how to pay attention. How to take control of your money instead of letting it leak through the cracks.

But here’s what didn’t stick: the practice of it

My Own Money Mistakes

I wasn’t exactly a sponge for financial wisdom. I was more like a sieve — some good stuff stuck, but most of it drained out the side in favor of whatever impulse I was chasing at the time.

I remember thinking I’d be frugal later, after I wasn’t a poor, broke, scrimping college student. And later, I said I would do it later, after I got a “real” job that paid a “decent” wage. Frugality, it seemed, was a phase I’d grow into. My dad had done it — why wouldn’t I?

But here’s the truth: I watched and admired my dad’s financial discipline, but it didn’t rub off on me. Habits don’t transfer osmotically, and simply watching your parents be “good” at money doesn’t mean you will be too.

If anything, I learned that good advice — even loving, solid, well-intentioned advice — only works if it’s practiced, reinforced, and repeated. And that’s something I never got the chance to do with my dad.

Do you know the 5 Morning Habits of Successful People? Read more!

My Husband’s Dad: Retirement as Religion

My husband’s dad had a different money philosophy. If my dad was all about self-reliance and frugality, his dad was all about long-term security — retirement, specifically.

He died shortly after my husband finished grad school and before I had the chance to meet him. But his legacy was loud and clear: Save for retirement like your life depends on it. My husband started maxing out his 401(k) at age 24 and hasn’t missed a year since. And I don’t just mean up to the employer match — he goes all in.

It’s impressive, honestly. He’s built an incredibly strong financial base. But that kind of single-minded focus can also leave blind spots. There are other vehicles and strategies now that might serve him better, but he’s not always open to exploring them. Why mess with what’s working?

I get it. It’s hard to let go of the employer-sponsored retirement plan script.

Unlike me, he absorbed his dad’s habits through osmosis and genetics. But just like me, we have not learned how to evolve with our parents’ approach to money.

Our Kids Don’t Understand Money: That’s on Us

Our kids are six and four, and I’ll be honest: They don’t have a solid understanding of how money works. My youngest stubbornly believes a fistful of pennies is worth more than a dollar because 10 or 20 “monies” is clearly better than “one money.”

It’s hard to fault that logic. They don’t handle cash. They don’t see paper checks. Their concept of money is a swirl of digital transactions and Apple Pay swipes. I get paid, some number updates on my phone, and the ethers of the internet flash numbers at me.

To them, money is invisible, like electricity or the Wi-Fi signal. They know money is important and they need it to live and acquire “things,” but they don’t grasp the mechanisms behind it.

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I had a plastic coin purse filled with sticky dimes, nickels, and Canadian coinage. I’d dump my change in the corner, slowing down the line to count hundreds of pennies.

I learned, in real time, that money is finite. My kids don’t have that experience. My husband and I both work full-time, and in our off hours, services like DoorDash, Shipt, and UberEats bring us our groceries and household goods. We rarely have money on hand, and our kids even less.

So it’s our fault and responsibility that our youngest thinks 10 pennies is more than one dollar. We need to teach our kids about money, making it less abstract so they can learn its value and its power.

How Parents Can Step In Without Lecturing

Here’s what I wish my parents had done—and what we’re trying to establish.

1. Talk about money and build guardrails around it.
2. Encourage saving, and enforce it.
3. Talk about investing, and show them how it is done.
4. Talk about debt and what it takes to eliminate debt.

My dad always suggested that I set aside a portion of my babysitting wages and birthday money, but I blew him off. Later. I had important Dollar Store bins to raid.

My aunt, my dad’s sister, had a more practical approach. She made her daughter set up a savings account and forced her to always set aside 50% of whatever money came her way. The diversion was automatic and enforced, no fiscal willpower or money evangelizing required.

Some of my friends were savers without that enforced structure. They liked the feeling of having money and were reluctant to spend it. But that’s not how I was wired. I needed guardrails and enforcement.

I want to try that with my own kids now, taking a carrot-and-stick approach.

Over the past couple of months, I have let my kids fail with small amounts of money. The idea is to:

1. Let your kids lose some money.
2. Let your kids blow money on something stupid.

I’ve let my daughter take a plastic purse, with a cheap, one-snap closure, to the store, knowing that money would come shooting out as she swung it wildly to and fro. The money, I’ve told her, is gone.

You lost it. That’s what happens. Take better care of it. What can we do next time? Ask Mom to hold it? Put it in a more secure purse or belt bag?

And I let my husband buy an $8 book at Target. A readily available title, it would have been $0.50 max at a Once Upon A Child store or Goodwill bin. And it ate up all his money. But the next time he wants something, that purchase will sting.

The next step is we’re going to make lists of goals for our money:

• Save
• Donate
• Invest
• Buy

In a week or so, we’ll open savings accounts at the bank. The low-interest APYs make me cringe, but they’re too young to learn about buying shorts or building a crowdfunding ladder. And as more money comes in, I’m going to make them set aside half of it — in a rainy day fund or their college savings plan.

Nothing, of course, will click overnight. But I want to save them from some of the financial pain I endured earlier in life and not feel guilty for bailing them out of crises in their adult years.

Because financial literacy isn’t a matter of maturity. It doesn’t just show up one day, like adult molars, when they are old enough. It’s my responsibility to pave and clear the way.

Explore more: Teach Your Teens About Investing.

The Father’s Day No One Talks About

I’m not a dad, so I don’t get Father’s Day gifts. But I am a wife, daughter, and mom, and I know what usually ends up in the gift bag: dollar-bin junk. Plastic tools. Socks with puns. A tie nobody wants. Stuff that’s bad for the environment, a waste of money, and forgotten before the day’s end.

A lot of budget-friendly blogs and TikTokers show funny reels of taking kids to the dollar store and letting them pick out a gift.

But why are we teaching our kids that it’s cute and thoughtful to gift someone garbage?

Before you come at me with digital pitchforks, I am not anti-dollar store. I buy gift bags there, balloons, jump ropes, and bubble mix. There’s a time and place to save money by dropping by a Dollar General or Five Below. But in terms of Father’s Day gifts, I reckon that dollar stores fall wildly short of offering anything useful and desirable.

With my kids this year, I asked them to think about what Dad likes and what he needs.

They’re giving their dad a book and coupons for him to redeem. Not the bed-and-breakfast ones that no one likes. But for “dibs” on the living room, calling the family movie, or dictating our car playlist.

What I Wish I Could Ask My Dad

If my dad were still here, I wouldn’t ask him about interest rates or Roth IRAs.

I’d ask him how he stuck to his rigid beliefs that made him Frugal Without A Cause. What did he visualize when he skipped the upgrade or paid cash for a used car? What voice in his head kept him from spending money he did have as if it did not exist?

Because I would have rather inherited that approach to money than any money itself, and I want my kids to get that inheritance too, which is why I need to be an active part in building the legacy.

So, maybe the point of Father’s Day, if you’re going to celebrate it, is not just another grill spatula, but showing your children the grit and guidance to build something stronger.

Your children are watching you and learning, but they are also waiting for hands-on direction from you to show them how.