How to teach your kids about money when you struggle with it yourself

Understand how poverty and trauma often go hand in hand. Learning about money and budgeting are just the tip of the iceberg. “A growing body of research indicates that cognitive, emotional, and behavioral issues are associated with negative financial management behaviors,” write Bruce Ross, an assistant professor specializing in financial therapy at the University of Kentucky, and Ed Coambs, a couples counselor, in an article in the Journal of Financial Therapy. In describing the impacts of psychological trauma on financial well-being, the two men go on to say that “various traumas can leave people trying to satisfy inner and outer voids through spending money, hoarding money, or controlling through access to or limitation of money.”