It’s a scene that’s been played for laughs in more than a few movies. Picture a happy young couple who’ve only just learned that they’re going to be parents excitedly sharing their big news with family and friends, only to be hit with a virtual tidal wave of unsolicited but well-intentioned advice.
Despite the fact that the Mom-to-be has been pregnant barely a month, her BFF immediately asks — with breathless urgency — if she’s gotten her baby on the waiting list yet for… and then proceeds to list the area’s trendiest and most ridiculously-expensive nursery schools.
“I mean, if you haven’t,” she adds ruefully, “then you might as well forget ever getting your precious, little darling into any of the really good private schools let alone an Ivy League college.” And of course, we laugh.
But even in our amusement, we recognize that there actually is an uncomfortable measure of truth in what she said… particularly if you change “get them on the right preschool waiting lists” to “start saving to pay for their college education.”
Knowing how important that is to your child’s future, “Be smart with your money” has a way of very quickly rising to the top of your parental “To Do” list. But next to that entry, you’ll hopefully find another checklist item that may be a bit more challenging but is nevertheless just as crucial: “Teach your child to be smart with money.”
One of the things that makes that so challenging is that the world in which they’ll learn that valuable lesson is dramatically different from the one in which we grew up. You, for example, may have vivid and even fond memories of excitedly accompanying your parent on a trip to the bank.
Walking in through those big, shiny doors, filling out the deposit slip with a pen that was mysteriously chained to the counter, and then standing patiently in line until one of the friendly, smiling tellers invited you up to her window.
You may even remember banking in your grade school classroom, where every week you faithfully kept track in your own passbook of what you deposited into your personal account.
Now compare those “vintage” banking experiences with how money is commonly managed in today’s world, where thanks to the convenience of direct deposit, drive-up ATMs and on-demand account access from your home computer or smartphone, it’s a wonder kids even know what a bank is.
Modern technology has presented parents with a formidable challenge — one that requires a conscious effort on their part to ensure that their children acquire the basic skills and values they’ll need not just to survive as the world around them continues to change but to thrive.
On that count, young Noah Zawadzki is lucky, as are his seven year-old sister Zoe and five year-old brother Randy. Because they have a Mom and Dad who not only understand the value of a dollar, they realize how important it is that their children understand it, too.
And it helps that they have the collective support of their family who share those values. With it, they’ve been able to successfully make that conscious effort, helping their children learn to both respect money and begin saving it for the future.
Although financial products like savings accounts for kids and junior checking for teenagers were once commonplace in banking, Randy and Kim Zawadzki of West Seneca were happy to find that they were available from the Western New York Federal Credit Union, where they had been members since 2008. And they didn’t hesitate to put those tools to work.
Just as they had for his big sister and big brother respectively seven and five years earlier, as soon as they could after baby Noah was born this past December, the Zawadzkis visited their Credit Union’s West Seneca office and signed him up for one of the Smart Saver accounts they offer for kids up through age 15, making the little guy officially the youngest of the community-chartered not-for-profit institution’s more than 8,000 members.
In the eyes of his Mom and Dad, however, it made him something even more important: a saver. And considering how big a part of both of their families’ traditions financial responsibility has always been, the couple is confident that being money savvy will impact their children’s lives as positively as it did theirs.
To encourage them to look forward positively to putting money in the bank — whether it’s their personal account or their personal “piggy,” they give their children the arguably retro joy of actually making their deposits in person at their Credit Union… where being greeted by name and sent home with a treat undoubtedly doesn’t hurt.
Their own attitudes about money, of course, formed long before they became parents. As you can imagine, when they were initially planning their life together, they had to deal with the same money issues most other couples face. But for Randy and Kim, some of the most difficult ultimately proved considerably less challenging because they came from families who taught them that saving was a virtue.
“Time and again,” recalls Randy, who manages a retail automotive service center, “my grandmother would tell me, ‘If there’s something you really want, first you make the money you need to buy it, and then you buy it.’”
That lesson, he adds, paid off later and in a big way, because the money that his financial self-discipline motivated him to save enabled him and his bride to buy the home in which they’re now raising three hopefully lifelong savers of their own.
For her part, Kim’s life experience both mirrors and contrasts with her husband’s. Raised by a single mom who at times worked as many as three jobs to provide for her and her two sisters, she’s still paying off the loan debt she had to incur to get the college degree that made her present career as a Special Education teacher with the Hamburg schools possible.
And though it was never easy, she observes, it did teach her that it can… and most often does… take a lot of hard work to get anywhere in life and — just as importantly — that you have to work equally hard to take care of what that hard work earns you.
It’s a lesson, she says, that she and Randy intend to work just as hard to make sure their children never forget.
Doug Carpenter is Community Relations Manager for the Western New York Federal Credit Union and a former Western New York Family columnist.