Should Children Have An Eftpos Card, And Other Money Questions

Have you seen the money related conversation starter cards circulating in the social media lately?

It is the Financial Service Council NZ teaming up with Hatch investment platform who brings us these downloadable cards that each have a money related question to answer.

I thought I’d do a post series of personally answering a few of these questions in each post and inviting you to share your own answer to the same question in the comments! You can download your own set here.

Should children have an eftpos card and at what age?

Yes, they eventually should.

While cash is the best way to teach your kids about money, because it’s visible and something physical to help grasp the somewhat abstract concept of money, our society is becoming more and more cashless, so they need to learn to use cards eventually.

At the latest I’d say that children need an eftpos card in their teens when they start working.

Savings accounts could exist earlier, but transaction account with a card is probably not necessary until they have a job and money coming in from somewhere other than you.

If you have a family, how did this impact your finances?

I have two young children, at the time of writing they are 3-and 1-years-old.

Having children has majorly affected my finances. It has affected how much I have been able to earn, and therefore had a huge impact on how much we could borrow from the bank to buy our first home.

On top of lowering my income, they have increased our expenses. As they grow, they eat more and more food (with current food prices rising too, our grocery bills are off the chart).

And that is just one expense category that they have increased. They need clothes, activities (you wouldn’t believe how much paper we go through for drawing!!) and such.

Having them has also made traveling a lot more expensive.

The financial impact of having children is often not discussed I feel, but it is significant. Add it to the fact that one of the biggest causes to relationship breakdowns is money stress, I think it should be spoken about more.

Have you ever taken a parental leave break? How did this impact your finances?

I have two children as mentioned above, so I took parental leave break twice.

With my first I worked full-time until I was 38 weeks pregnant and qualified for the full Paid Parental Leave payments paid in New Zealand.

I think I was on leave for about 7 months, then went back to my cafe job part-time (working only Saturdays and some Sundays).

With my second child I had only been working part-time so I only qualified for some of the Paid Parental Leave entitlement.

I was off 6 months before going back part-time, until I was told they are shortening their opening hours, essentially eliminating my hours of work.

While going on Paid Parental leave for the first time was somewhat of a drop on income, second time around it wasn’t because it was just matched to what I was already earning.

Being in the industry I was (hospitality), it didn’t really impact my rate either. My wage had been steadily climbing with the minimum wage anyway, no extra pay raises.

I can imagine having time off can potentially have a huge impact on your finances, which is why money and having kids need to be more talked about.

You can find other money questions and answers in here.

I’d love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments below!