Teaching Taxes
My youngest can put pants on. I know this because she puts on shorts in 40-degree weather and the process is essentially the same. I know she can invert her socks because I’ve seen her do this with doll clothes. It seems like she just wants me to do things for her for reasons unrelated to her actual abilities.
As a mom of four, I’ve been making a concerted effort to do less for my kids. Really. They’re not babies anymore and they can do stuff for themselves. My initiative has been the source of many tantrums in the youngest two, and nobody is more tempted than I to stop their fussing by just giving in, but I’m standing my ground, hoping for a long-term payoff.
At the same time, in the other room, the middle schooler is working on his math assignment, which I’m delighted to see has real-world implications; it’s about saving and investing. As he works out compound interest problems, I’m trying to stop myself from complicating things by telling him more than he needs to know right now about rates and markets.
Schools, at least for us elder millennials, did a subpar job of teaching life skills, stuff like balancing a checkbook, to which my teen would ask “What’s a checkbook?” And then I’d faint.
Because I know a good many 20-ish-year-olds, I believe the problem of undereducation persists, even if my evidence is purely anecdotal. Learning to “adult” for the newly minted is as frustrating to them as crooked socks are to a five-year-old. We need to encourage self-reliance, but first, we have to teach the skills in question. Among these are the basics of household management, finance, and taxes. Don’t rely on the schools to do this for your kids.
If you’ve got an older teen or young adult that needs help with tax basics there are ample resources available, like:
This article outlines the most basic of basics for first-time filers.
This one from IRS.gov gives a nice step-by-step for using their free file system.
Slightly more complex is this article demonstrating the merits of filing a tax return even if you’re below the income threshold.
And finally, just for fun, here’s one about the evolution of the tax system in the USA.
There are few areas of overlap right now in parenting my “bookends”, that is, the oldest and the youngest of my kids, simultaneously, except when it comes to the need to teach rather than coddle. We don’t appreciate the presence of failure in our lives, but we need it. Cliché or not, it is the best teacher.
That said, I would probably draw the line at allowing my kid to be jailed over tax evasion or something. Continuous education is key to helping them succeed and, of course, avoid prison. A great way to lay a foundation of solid financial principles, if your kids are old enough to appreciate it, is to read Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money as a family. It’s the treatise on responsible personal finance and will be required reading in my home.
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