We know one of the best pleasures is sharing your wealth with your family. Some choose to fund university costs; others help the latest generation step on to the property ladder. If, after ensuring your own life is as comfortable as possible, you decide to gift or trust wealth to your family, there can be a little anxiety around how they may use your hard-earned funds.

For the younger generation, locking money into a Junior ISA means it won’t be available until age 18. Ensuring they – and any other generation in your family – have a good financial education and support could be as big a present as the wealth you want to provide them with.

Your Courtiers adviser can help your family understand the best way to continue benefitting from your family wealth, but sometimes, the biggest challenge isn’t financial access – it’s financial education.

So, what can you do?

Get kids involved

Hypothetically, what would happen if you handed your credit card to an eight-year-old child? If the thought makes you recoil with horror, we understand your apprehension.

Generally, it’s nice to keep children in a lovely bubble where they can receive things without having to wonder where they came from. In the long term, this can have consequences. Instead, offering a way for kids to understand budgeting and costs in a fun way could lead them to getting your credit card (or that eventual Junior ISA) and using it in a responsible, considered way.

For example, what if you get them to help you with the next supermarket shop? Whether you sit together to do the online order or lead them round the supermarket, giving them a shopping list and a budget that means they can get everything – or everything plus a sweet for themselves – but only if they choose certain options (like having to buy a cheaper version of a product). Doing so also gives you an opportunity to discuss some of the ways shops can entice you to spend more. For example, ‘deals’ that aren’t really deals (it’s not a deal if you didn’t want it in the first place, after all).

Or, if you want them to learn about investing, identify something they would want to save up for, and get them to ‘deposit’ money into a junior ‘bank account’ for it (while some banks offer bank accounts to children as low as six, many are for 11-year-olds and up). Every time they deposit money into their bank account, top it up with some of your own money, if you can. If you always add a percentage of the whole amount (i.e. 10% of the whole account balance each time), you can demonstrate the meaning and the benefits of compound interest, or pension tax relief.

Finally, talking to and around children about money means they get an understanding of the language and the way it can work, meaning they are more likely to be comfortable around financial decisions in the future. Although you need to be balanced and take care not to give children any potential anxiety around money – both saving and spending.

The Gender Gap

While it’s important to make sure all your children or grandchildren feel comfortable with money and investing, if you have daughters or granddaughters, they are statistically better at investing than their male counterparts. Not only are women statistically better at investing than men, but they also seem to do so with less risk. Making sure they feel happy investing could mean the nest egg you give them hatches into something exquisite.

Talking isn’t cheap

So, now you have the [grand]children on the right path, what about the other generations? If you’re thinking about how to support adults, being open and honest about your financial mistakes is a good way to help them reflect on their own situations. For example, a recent survey by MoneyBox  revealed that a third of people wish they started saving for retirement earlier. If this is something you have experience around, why not share your wisdom? It’s also something Courtiers can help you approach your family about.

Inviting conversation means that you will get a sense of how they approach money, and hopefully understand what ‘safe’ looks like to them around assets, savings, and investments. However, it may not look the same as your idea of safe. Remembering they are at a different stage in life and have different priorities should help everyone come out of the conversation with a better vision of what could happen to any funds in the future.

In the long term

Just like your investment, having a long-term view on financial education is essential, and will allow your family to show you the way they approach money.

Another way you can introduce longer-term investments is setting up a JSIPP for your children or grandchildren. You can use this to sit down with them and review what’s happening with the investment without touching it to show children how to build wealth for a long-term, delayed gratification aim. They won’t be able to access these savings until they reach personal pension age, after all (currently this would be 57, but is likely to rise).

While offering them a solid basis on how to save and/or invest as well as what to focus on, you should also respect your family may have their own financial priorities. Courtiers can help everyone gain a long-term view, advising on the best way to support both your and your family’s wishes.