We Didn't Have a TV. It Made Me Financially Free.

From when I was 10 until I was 17, my family didn't have a TV.

To a modern kid, that sounds like a human rights violation. But that missing TV is the reason I've never once had to "figure out money" as an adult. And it's the reason your kids won't have to either.

Dinner ran for hours at our place

Without a TV, dinner wasn't something you finished. It was somewhere you stayed. And the conversations I remember best were about money: shares, dividends, bank accounts, how the family business was going (all four of us kids worked in it, $5 an hour, and we felt rich).

My pocket money started at 20 cents a week, which Mum now swears never happened. It happened, Mum! At primary school, $2 went into my bank book every single week.

None of it felt like education. It was just dinner. Money wasn't a secret in our house, or a stress. It was normal.

The inheritance nobody could see

That "normal" quietly became a brokerage account at 19, a first property in my 20s, and more in my 30s. Not because I earned spectacular money. Because the habits were already twenty years old by the time the decisions got big.

And then the habits bought the two things I actually care about. In my late 30s I had my two girls on my own, because money was never going to be the thing that said no. And I left a 21-year corporate career to build Little Finance Builders, surviving without a salary while I did it (and still surviving without a salary!).

That's what money skills buy. Not a bigger TV (clearly). Choices.

The other version of the story

In 21 corporate years, I sat next to the other version, over and over. Brilliant, capable adults living pay cheque to pay cheque, meeting compound interest for the first time in their 40s. Not one of them less smart than me. The difference was never intelligence. It was a head start.

The research agrees: kids form their core money habits by around age 7. The window that matters most is happening in your house right now, somewhere between the school run and bath time.

You don't need my mum to do this

"But Adele, your mum was an accountant. I can barely face my bank statement."

Fair. But my parents never ran lectures. They just let us into the conversation and gave us tiny amounts of real money to practise with. Any parent can do that this week: let your child pay at the checkout, put their savings in a clear jar, treat "why can't we buy it?" as the start of a chat instead of the end of one.

Small money moments. That's the entire method. It's how my six-year-old recently counted her own coins at a checkout and picked the item that fit her budget, unprompted. She'd been practising for three years.

Give them the table

You can't give your kids my childhood dinner table. But you can give them everything it taught me. That's why I built Money Wise Kids: The Parent's Playbook: six short modules with scripts, tools and small money moments, for kids aged 3 to 10. No finance degree required.

Doors open Monday 13 July. If you're on my email list, there'll be something special inside for you when they do. Join the list here with the Starter Kit or see the Playbook here.

Let's make money normal in families. Starting with yours.