6 New Year’s Money Resolutions for Parents Who Want Their Kids To Be Millionaires

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This year, you’re making New Year’s resolutions a family affair. You’re focusing on family walks and reading time. While your resolutions may take care of your kids’ bodies and minds, there may be one part of their development you’re forgetting — their financial well-being. By teaching savvy money management, you could even have a future millionaire begging for just one more story before bedtime.

Parents who want to see their children embrace smart money habits throughout their lives can add a few new items to their New Year’s resolutions. These six goals aren’t hard to accomplish, but they can be seeds planted now that help grow your kids’ wealth over their lifetimes.

1. Model Good Money Habits

Kids often pick up their parents’ habits — for better or worse. Just as you’d rather not have your child inherit your penchant for using colorful language in traffic, you should ensure that you’re modeling smart financial habits as well.

That means being mindful about impulse spending and inviting your kids into family conversations about major purchases. It’s good for them to understand the concept of getting good value for the price.

You should also let your kids see that living below your means doesn’t have to mean deprivation. Instead of elaborate family vacations every year, you could plan smaller, less expensive — though still incredibly fun — weekend trips throughout the year.

If this means addressing some of your own habits, don’t worry about being perfect. Watching you adopt healthier money behaviors can make a lasting impression on your kids at an impressionable age.

2. Encourage Financial Literacy

Maybe you came from a household where money was mysterious — even taboo. Talking about personal finances was considered impolite, even if it meant missing out on the chance to learn about building wealth. To ensure your own children have a better shot at entering the millionaires’ club, you can help them learn financial concepts early.

Spend some time online or at your local library finding books and other resources that teach kids about money. For reference, Security National Bank has a list of children’s books that touch on finances, including the Berenstain Bears, who may be fondly familiar to millennial parents.

With older children, you can branch out into podcasts or content creators who focus on financial literacy, investing, saving, spending and even retirement. Doing this together gives you peace of mind that your kids are learning from solid role models — while also giving you extra hangout time. A win-win.

3. Open Savings and Investment Accounts for Them

Let this be the year you teach your kids about compound interest. If you haven’t already, open savings and investment accounts for them and start making small but regular contributions. Once they’re old enough to understand, you can show them how their money has grown over time.

Decades of compounding interest can turn into a substantial amount of money by the time your child reaches adulthood, even with modest contributions. This financial foundation can help them launch their adult lives, whether that means starting a business venture that yields millions before age 30 (a parent can dream) or pursuing an advanced degree that helps them land a higher-paying job.

If your kids are old enough to earn money — whether they’re shoveling snow or clocking into a fast-food shift — you can further incentivize them by offering to match a portion of whatever they contribute to their savings or investment accounts.

4. Teach Them Budgeting and Saving With Technology

Parenting in the digital age isn’t always easy. However, there are times when technology can make aspects of parenting much more efficient — like teaching kids how to budget and save their money using a format they already understand and engage with daily.

To make the learning process more impactful and interactive, parents can tap into money and finance-oriented apps specifically designed for kids and teens. Popular money apps like Cash App’s Families feature can give teens a hands-on way to manage money while allowing caregivers a real-time, bird’s-eye view of their activity.

With a parent or guardian acting as the account “sponsor,” adults can monitor activity, set limits and even block certain contacts. Meanwhile, teens can learn to set savings goals, receive direct deposits and use a prepaid Visa debit card responsibly.

The goal isn’t perfection, but progress — giving kids room to make decisions and learn from them in a supervised, controlled environment. Instead of combing through credit card statements or receipts every month, parents and kids can engage directly and instantly about responsible decision-making with money.

Through online resources like apps, kids can become more confident handling money — a key step on the path to building wealth in a digital-first world.

5. Foster Their Creative Spirit

Sometimes, the ideas that set the world ablaze — and make their originators very rich — come from humble places, like a garage. If your kid has been talking about building a robot from spare parts, learning a new craft or starting a lemonade stand this summer, encourage them.

Whether your child has an aptitude for robotics, business, cooking, athletics or art, consider letting them attend a summer camp or take extra classes at a community center.

Wealth often comes from innovation and creating something of value that excites others, not just from earning wages. Letting your children safely experiment with new passions could be the first step toward building something meaningful — and profitable — down the road.

6. Teach Them Delayed Gratification

To keep your kids from impulse-spending away what could be their future millions — or abandoning a promising but slow-growing idea — teach them that good things often come to those who wait.

Help them distinguish between a need and a want, and set up a system where they must wait for what they want until they can pay for it themselves — ideally when it’s on sale. You can also introduce the 48-hour rule for nonessential purchases, requiring them to wait at least 48 hours before buying something to determine whether it’s a true desire or just a passing fancy.

The Bottom Line

You want your kids to understand that getting wealthy doesn’t come from “get-rich-quick” schemes or sudden lottery windfalls. It comes from hard work, smart choices and pursuing passions that create value. Parents can reinforce this message by being strong financial role models, promoting financial literacy, embracing technology and teaching their kids to invest — and to be patient.

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