Actress, producer, businesswoman and mother of two, Sarah Michelle Gellar understands the importance of teaching the younger generation about financial literacy.
He recently teamed up with Fidelity to share how their new app, Fidelity Youth, can help teens create, manage and invest their own money while teaching them valuable skills they’ll take with them to every stage of life.
Sarah Michelle Gellar Collaborates With Loyalty To Help Kids Learn Financial Literacy
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For the actress, talking about money with her children at an early age is something she feels is important. And after his teenage daughter recently went to him to ask for a credit card, he realized that times were changing.
“It’s an important subject to talk about,” Gellar told The Blast exclusively. “My daughter came to me and said, ‘You know, mom, I really need a credit card,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, no way.'”
But then her daughter told her that so many places no longer accept cash and that’s when Gellar realized “this isn’t my childhood anymore.”
“It was different, and I had to follow the way he was learning and so I had to sit down as a parent and really start doing research and figuring out the best way to actually teach him financial literacy,” she continued. “And especially when you really sit down and think about it, because there’s no real money transaction anymore, it makes it more in the ether.”
Contributed Photos – Fidelity Youth App
Gellar said she thinks that most kids don’t fully understand earning and saving money, because they don’t look at it the same way that previous generations did.
“When we had a piggy bank and you had this much money and then it went down, it’s much more figurative now and I think the literacy component is more important,” he said. “I actually came across the Fidelity Youth app in the first place before they contacted me because I had already done this research.”
The Fidelity Youth app “speaks to kids” in a language they understand, and that’s one of the reasons Gellar likes it. With parenting tools that help parents monitor without making decisions, she says it’s super easy with no or minimal account fees, and a great way for kids to learn financial literacy.
“You can really start with a small amount so that the kids can really learn. And then they encourage kids to continue learning because sometimes you give them a credit card and that’s it and you put money on it and again, they don’t understand where the money is coming from,” Gellar told The Blast. “But with Fidelity, they have this learning course that kids can do, and kids can make money from that and they can learn to invest. It’s really a safe environment that parents see a lot.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar Starts Teaching Her Kids About Money at an Early Age
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For Gellar and her family, money has been a topic of discussion since the children were small. He starts with three jars, one for spending, one for saving and one for donating, when the kids get birthday money.
“I really think about this and I think it’s really hard because kids think everything just comes from a machine,” he said. “You need cash, you go to the cash machine. But they don’t really understand that we have to work, that we have to earn money, that there are taxes, that there are ways to make money from your money. And that’s not an easy conversation to have.”
The app helps to have those money conversations without talking about “my money.” That helps make it “their conversation” instead.
Gellar started with three jars when her kids were around 5 years old, and it paved the way for more money conversations as the kids grew up.
“So, when they get birthday money, they understand that, and in that conversation we can also talk about you can save and this but we have to give money to the government. We’re really trying to have that conversation,” he said. “It can’t be taboo anymore because we’re crippling our children.”
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Gellar shared a story about when one of her friends went to college and got a credit card. He said he used his card for everything and ran up a lot of debt. His parents helped him and paid him, but then he did it again and at that time, his parents told him that they didn’t save him a second time.
“And he was like, ‘What do you mean?’ Because they never had that conversation,” he said. “It’s a credit card, you charge it, but he doesn’t understand that it’s his parents’ money that he’s earned, that they’ve earned. And I think this is a conversation that needs to be had.”
One thing Gellar was surprised to learn was the fact that parents are less likely to discuss money with their daughters.
“Some of the studies really impressed me,” he continued. “Parents are less likely to talk to girls about financial literacy than boys. Which, again, just perpetuates the myth of, ‘Oh, men will take care of us,’ that’s not how the real world works,” he said. “The earlier the conversation, the less challenging they are. You meet them where they are.”
The “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” actress bought her first home at age 20 and says it was her first introduction to owning something big. He worries about the younger generation as they seem to be moving further away from home ownership.
“It’s a lot of renting, and while I see great things about renting, also, at the end of the day, you’re just paying someone else’s mortgage,” he said. “Yes, a house can also be an investment but it is also an investment in yourself. There is actually something satisfying about owning a home.”
Contributed Photos – Fidelity Youth App
The Fidelity Youth app is the industry’s first retail brokerage account with savings, spending and investments for 13- to 17-year-olds. It is user-friendly and offers enhanced features to help teens put their financial learning into practice.
Through the app, teens can learn through videos, articles and tools, organize their funds into categories such as saving and spending, invest by buying mutual funds, stocks and EFTs, and earn money by taking in-app actions, completing learning modules and referring friends to the app .
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
