Teaching Children About Money: A Framework for Wealthy Canadian Families
- Sep 14, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 hours ago
Financial literacy does not happen by accident, and wealth does not automatically confer financial competence. Children in high-net-worth families face a particular challenge: they grow up surrounded by money but are rarely taught how it works, how to manage it, or how to think about it critically.
In this episode of The Artisan Podcast, Arthur Salzer, CFA, Founder and CEO of Northland Wealth Management, speaks with Robin Taub, CPA, CA, award-winning author of The Wisest Investment: Teaching Your Kids to Be Responsible, Independent and Money-Smart for Life, about how parents can teach financial responsibility at every age, and why the strategies matter even more for families with significant wealth.
The Five Pillars of Money: A Framework That Scales With Age
Taub’s framework is built around five pillars that apply at every stage of a child’s development: earn, save, spend, share, and invest. The pillars remain constant; the topics and examples within each one evolve as children grow. She breaks development into four stages: young children (ages 5 to 8), preteens (9 to 12), teenagers (13 to 17), and emerging adults (18 and over).
A five-year-old receives money from birthdays and the tooth fairy, and the lesson is about choices: how much to save, how much to spend, how much to give. A teenager may be earning income from a part-time job, managing a budget for the first time, and learning why a Tax-Free Savings Account works differently from a Registered Education Savings Plan. An emerging adult is filing their own tax return, managing rent and expenses, and beginning to make investment decisions.
“You start early, you lay a foundation, and you build on it. If you start when they’re young, they can make mistakes when the stakes are low and build knowledge, skills, and confidence for when the stakes become higher.”
— Robin Taub, CPA, CA, Author, The Wisest Investment
The Cashless Society Problem: Frictionless Spending and How to Counter It
One of the biggest shifts since Taub first published her book in 2010 is the near-disappearance of cash. The pandemic accelerated this transition dramatically. Where parents once used physical jars or envelopes to make money tangible and visible (a save jar, a spend jar, a give jar), spending is now almost entirely digital and frictionless. A child can tap a phone, click within a social media app, or use a supplementary credit card without ever seeing a bill or feeling the weight of a transaction.
This creates a specific challenge for wealthy families. When children have access to a supplementary card on a family account, they never see the statement, never make the payment, and develop no sense of what things cost. Taub recommends that children have their own accounts with their own cards as soon as they are old enough, with clear budgets and visibility into their own spending patterns.
The upside of the digital shift is that financial technology now provides tools that didn’t exist a decade ago. Mobile banking apps allow automatic transfers (paying yourself first), spending notifications, and budget tracking. For a generation that lives on their phones, these tools can make money management feel natural rather than burdensome.
Parents Have to Get Their Own House in Order First
Taub is direct about a prerequisite that many parents skip: before you can teach your children about money, you need to understand your own finances. The first chapter of her book is aimed at parents, not children, and introduces 11 healthy habits of financial management. These include knowing your net worth and cash flow, understanding the difference between good debt and bad debt, and the discipline of paying yourself first.
“A lot of parents think, how can I teach my kids about money if I’m not good at this myself? But you and your kids can learn together. It’s an opportunity for you to level up your money skills alongside them.”
— Robin Taub
For UHNW families, this often manifests differently. The wealth creator may be deeply sophisticated about corporate finance and investment but has never explained the family’s structures, trusts, or estate plan to the next generation. The gap is not about basic financial literacy; it’s about transparency and inclusion. Northland’s approach to human capital development is built on the premise that the time spent on education and communication is more valuable than any tax structure or trust arrangement.
Values-Based Financial Decisions: The Foundation That Prevents Entitlement
A common concern among wealth creators is how to raise children with purpose rather than entitlement. Taub’s answer centres on values. She has developed a tool called the Values Validator (available free on her website), which is a set of 20 statements designed to help individuals identify their top five personal values. When done as a family exercise, it reveals where values align and where they differ, and it provides a framework for financial decisions that feel meaningful rather than arbitrary.
Once values are clear, financial goals become more compelling. A savings goal tied to a personal value feels different from a savings goal imposed by a parent. Spending in alignment with values feels purposeful; spending out of alignment creates a sense of dissonance. This framework applies at every wealth level, but it is particularly important for families with significant resources, where the absence of financial constraints means values have to do the work that scarcity does in other households.
Canadian-Specific Tools: RESPs, TFSAs, and the OSC’s Get Smarter About Money
For Canadian families, Taub highlights several registered account types that serve as natural teaching moments. The Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) is particularly useful because parents can involve children in understanding how the account is invested, how the government matching (CESG) works, and how withdrawals are taxed when they go to university. As the child approaches post-secondary, the conversation shifts from growth assets to capital preservation, which teaches real-world portfolio management in miniature.
Other accounts like the Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) and the newer First Home Savings Account (FHSA) each have different rules about contributions, withdrawals, and tax treatment. Learning to navigate these is practical financial literacy that directly affects the next generation’s wealth accumulation.
For families wanting unbiased educational resources, Taub recommends the Ontario Securities Commission’s Get Smarter About Money website, which provides consumer-facing financial literacy content without selling any products.
Starting Late: It’s Never Too Late to Begin
Taub regularly works with families whose children are already teenagers or young adults and have never had a financial conversation at home. Her advice is practical: jump in at the stage your child is at now with age-appropriate content. Don’t start with the basics you would use for a seven-year-old. A teenager who has never been taught about money has still absorbed financial attitudes from peers, media, and observation. Meet them where they are.
“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Don’t let the fact that you haven’t started deter you.”
— Robin Taub
About the Guest
Robin Taub, CPA, CA is a Chartered Professional Accountant, keynote speaker, and award-winning author. Her book The Wisest Investment: Teaching Your Kids to Be Responsible, Independent and Money-Smart for Life (updated from the original A Parent’s Guide to Raising Money-Smart Kids) gives parents strategies for teaching financial responsibility at every age. Robin held professional positions in audit and taxation at KPMG and EY, and spent five years in derivatives marketing at Citibank Canada. She served as Chair of the CPA Canada Women’s Leadership Council and holds a Bachelor of Commerce (with High Distinction) from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
Make sure to check Northland Wealth’s YouTube Channel for more episodes.
