The surest way to make your children rich is to teach them how money is made, let them practise with real stakes, give them time and the right people early, and then live as the example yourself. Most parents prepare their kids to earn a living. A small group of wealthy families teaches theirs to build and keep wealth, and the habits are surprisingly repeatable.
Fifteen of them are counted down, from showing kids the real machinery of your income to writing trust rules, plus a bonus on why you should not obsess over legacy. Number one is the only item you cannot buy on their behalf.
Watch the full video here, or skip to the breakdown below.
The 15 ways at a glance
- Show them how you make money (0:36)
- Teach them the vocabulary and rules of the game early (2:17)
- Reward them for investing in themselves (3:46)
- Match every dollar they invest in stocks (6:03)
- Buy them coaching and proximity to high-value people (7:45)
- Create a family bank for future opportunities (9:52)
- Take care of their retirement at birth (11:35)
- Buy them cheap land outside the city (13:30)
- Pay them legally through the family business (15:02)
- Monitor their friends, change neighborhoods or countries (16:08)
- Let them lose real money while the stakes are small (17:12)
- Have them tell their partner to sign a prenup (18:20)
- Make them prove they can manage wealth before you give it (19:39)
- Add them to the family trust with investment rules (21:00)
- Get rich and happy yourself (22:22)
- Bonus: Don’t obsess over legacy (23:35)
15. Show them how you make money
A surprising number of kids think money arrives because an employer sends it or an ATM releases it. They never see the years of learning, the sales call, the rejection, the taxes, or the moment when 10,000 dollars lands in the business account and only 1,500 is left after everyone gets paid.
Show them the machine. Let them sit in on a call, look at a real invoice and hear why one client pays more than another. Explain which skills made your salary what it is. The idea to land is simple: somebody has a problem, you solve it, and part of the value comes back as money. The market pays for useful outcomes, not for hours or sweat.
A study of 2,389 low and moderate income homeowners found that adults who remembered more money teaching from their parents had higher credit scores and lower credit card debt.
14. Teach them the vocabulary and rules of the game early
Money is a tool, and most tools come with instructions. Teach the words: income, profit, equity, interest, inflation, tax, debt, assets, liabilities, diversification, cash flow, insurance, leverage and compound growth. Many adults struggle with them, so knowing them early is an edge.
Use real examples. When a child asks what the house costs, explain the down payment, the mortgage and how much the bank collects over the life of the loan. By the first paycheck they should know why the amount earned and the amount received differ, and before university they should understand the full cost of debt.
Once a child can name what is happening, they are much harder to confuse, impress or exploit.
13. Reward them for investing in themselves
A child’s first company is themselves: their body, mind, skills, reputation and ability to do something hard. Reward the purchases that grow those assets, such as books, courses, a gym membership, language lessons, an instrument or time with someone excellent. Many parents spend 200 dollars on shoes without a thought and hesitate over a 20 dollar book.
Paying for chores teaches that taking out the trash is worth a fee. The alternative is a self-help budget of 20 to 50 dollars for every book a child finishes, summarizes and can explain without ChatGPT. It mentions a dad in the Alux app who pays his son 5 dollars per finished coaching session.
Teach three questions before any self-investment: what capability will this give me, where will I use it, and how will I know it worked? That protects against anyone selling the feeling of progress without the result.
12. Match every dollar they invest in stocks
Make investing the easiest way for a child to double their money. They earn 100 dollars and can spend it or invest it and have you match it, leaving them with 200 dollars of assets. Set rules: they invest their own earned or saved money first, you match what they put in rather than what it grows to, and the money stays invested for an agreed period.
Make it personal. A child who loves Nike sneakers can buy Nike stock, and one who loves YouTube can buy Google stock. Each purchase of that company’s product sends a small portion back to them, which is a big aha about ownership. Teach them that a red price means a discount.
A field experiment with around 14,000 adults found participation rose from 3 percent with no match to 8 percent with a 20 percent match and 14 percent with a 50 percent match. Their first crash should happen while they still live with you.
11. Buy them coaching and proximity to high-value people
A rich child grows up around entrepreneurs, engineers, investors and builders, and seeing them do the thing demystifies it. If they can, so can I. A good enough coach is not enough, so drive the extra hour for the best one you can reach.
In 1984 educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom compared students in an ordinary classroom with students who got one-on-one tutoring. The tutored students performed about two standard deviations better, so the average tutored student outscored roughly 98 percent of the classroom group. A good coach sees exactly where you are stuck, corrects the specific mistake and sets the pace to you.
Prepare your child before every meeting on how to show up, make the most of it and follow up. High-value people enjoy helping young people who respect the opportunity, and lose interest when the parent wants the relationship more than the child does.
10. Create a family bank for future opportunities
Rich families keep an opportunity fund, which is not a free ATM. It pays for progress: education, a move to a better city, tools for a real skill, first inventory for a business or a deposit on an asset. The child applies, explaining how much they need, what they will put in, what success looks like and what happens if it fails.
Funding can be a gift, a loan or a small family ownership stake. Picture a 19-year-old who wants 5,000 dollars and arrives with a one-page plan, 1,000 dollars of their own savings, a supplier and a few real customers. Even if it fails, it is the best 5,000 dollars of education you will spend, and the 1,000 they lost will not be forgotten.
Document purpose and repayment terms, ask for progress updates and discuss the business together. The bank should make the child braver, sharper and more accountable, and should never make consequences disappear.
9. Take care of their retirement at birth
Fifty thousand dollars invested at birth and growing at a hypothetical 8 percent a year becomes roughly 2.35 million dollars by age 50 with nothing added. Wait until 65 and it passes 7 million. The video flags this as a nominal illustration before taxes, fees and inflation, with no guaranteed returns.
If 50,000 is not your reality, start with 500, add a bit each birthday, redirect gift money and ask grandparents to fund the future instead of buying the seventh plastic toy. Consistency does the heavy lifting once it has fifty years to run.
Tell the child the account exists once they are old enough, but do not sell it as an 18th birthday jackpot. Knowing that old age is handled lets a young person take the job that teaches the most, build the thing and walk away from a bad boss.
Time is the first asset you can hand a child.
8. Buy them cheap land outside the city
Look 30 to 45 minutes outside a growing city, then slow down, because cheap land is usually cheap for a reason, such as no road or water. You are buying the direction the city is already heading, so check population growth, jobs moving outward, road or rail access and potential utilities. Cities have grown along transport lines for centuries.
Expect about 20 years before the investment materializes, either through a sale or a house built on it. Only buy what the family can comfortably hold, because land pays nothing while charging taxes, maintenance and legal fees.
Take the child to see it, show them the map, camp on it and plant a tree. Walk them through why you chose that road, that town and that distance. The land becomes a home, a business, a small development or the sale that funds something bigger.
7. Pay them legally through the family business
Family businesses have used kids as free labor since the first shop opened. Flip the deal: give them real, age-appropriate work and pay them legally. Organizing inventory, cleaning the office, shooting product photos, editing video, researching competitors and packing all count. Do not invent a title or put it on paper only, because that teaches a different lesson.
An earlier Alux video on using taxes to get rich covers how hiring your child can lower a tax burden. In the US, how a child’s pay is taxed depends on age and how the business is set up, and a retirement account contribution requires real earned income, so get the details right.
That first paycheck teaches a lot at once, and it fuels everything else on the list.
6. Monitor their friends, change neighborhoods or countries
The blunt claim: a child gets about one hour a day listening to you and about seven absorbing everyone else, and friends set what feels normal. Families should be willing to move schools, cities or countries if a child falls in with the wrong crowd.
Researchers followed families randomly offered help moving from high-poverty housing into lower-poverty neighborhoods. Kids who moved young did better as adults, and moving at around age eight added roughly 302,000 dollars to lifetime earnings. The younger the move, the bigger the gain, though uprooting a family is hard and timing counts.
A child can still end up a loser in a rich neighborhood if you ignore their friends, so do your part.
5. Let them lose real money while the stakes are small
A kid who never loses 50 dollars under your roof is the one who loses 50,000 at 25 trying to prove they are an adult. Give them real money to run and let reality teach. The pain makes the lesson valuable, so do not rescue them. Your job starts afterward: ask what they expected, what happened and what they will check next time.
In one experiment, children aged six, eight and ten spent money in a pretend store, and those who regularly got an allowance knew prices better and were harder to fool with cash versus credit.
Raise the stakes as they grow: a clothing budget, travel budget, small investment account, their own phone bill, a tiny business or part of school costs. These small losses are the cheapest tuition they will ever pay.
4. Have them tell their partner to sign a prenup
The script for the child is simple: my parents say we get nothing from the inheritance unless you sign this, and I want the best for us and our kids. You play the bad guy, not them. Marriage joins two incomes, two piles of debt, two sets of habits and businesses.
Inherited wealth comes with rules, and a prenup built only to crush the weaker person poisons trust. Raise it early and calmly, give the partner time, full disclosure and their own lawyer, and pay for that lawyer where fair. A prenup signed freely has a real chance of holding up.
A decent lawyer covers existing and future businesses, debts, property, support, what happens if one partner quits work to raise children, and years of unpaid effort poured into an asset the other owns. Local law decides whether an agreement can be enforced.
3. Make them prove they can manage wealth before you give it
You would not toss Formula 1 keys to someone who has only driven a shopping cart, yet families do the money version constantly. The kid manages nothing for 18 years, then a birthday, a death or a trust drops millions on them. The rich build a ladder: a small budget at 14, a tracked investment account at 16, a pitch to the family bank at 18, then a property budget, a slice of the portfolio, a business project or part of the family foundation.
Tax data supports the worry. In one slice of a study, someone who inherited around 150,000 dollars was about four times more likely to leave the workforce than someone who got under 25,000. Andrew Carnegie feared a large inheritance would ruin the person who got it and wanted his kids trained as stewards.
2. Add them to the family trust with investment rules
One day a child may inherit everything on the same day they lose the person who knew how it all worked. A trust is the game plan for how wealth is managed whether you are alive or not. It sets how much they can withdraw, who is in charge and what lets them draw more. Rules can include a bonus for graduating with higher grades, an extra bonus for every child, or a set percentage to buy a first home.
Pick trustees carefully, because the richest uncle is not automatically the wisest. Leave room to breathe too. A trust that controls every decision from the grave can punish a good heir for situations you never imagined, so guide the purpose, protect against ruin and leave space for judgment.
1. Get rich and happy yourself
Your kid cannot inherit money you never made or copy habits you never had. Children also adjust for the traits they did not like in their parents, so you might skip drinking because of a parent’s problem. Rich and happy parents are not always vocal, but they set the threshold for what life should look like, and it is your job to show a life well lived.
Poor parents cannot teach their kids to be rich, because behavior does the teaching. So get richer, get happier, keep friends, build things with passion in front of your kids and skip the complaining. Even without children, practising this list stacks up into a successful life.
Bonus: Don’t obsess over legacy
Can you name your great-grandparents? Most people cannot. Nobody will remember who the 15th richest person in the world is in fifty years. The video asks for balance between long-term thinking and living in the moment: raise good humans, explore the world together and let the future arrive.
Raising kids who can handle money
The list runs in a clear arc. Teach how money works, give kids early assets and real practice, surround them with strong people, and protect the wealth with agreements and trusts that guide rather than control.
Every item here improves a child’s odds, and none replaces the example you set. The video ends by asking which of the 15 you most wish your own parents had done.
FAQ
How can I make my children rich?
Teach them how money is made and the vocabulary of finance, match their investments, fund their retirement early and give them real coaching. Let them lose small amounts while stakes are low, and model the habits yourself.
How much could money invested at birth grow to?
It illustrates 50,000 dollars growing at a hypothetical 8 percent a year to roughly 2.35 million dollars by age 50 and over 7 million by 65. It notes this ignores taxes, fees and inflation and that returns are never guaranteed.
Should I match my child’s investments?
Yes: match what they invest from their own money, not what it grows to, and keep it invested for an agreed period. In a field experiment, a 50 percent match raised participation from 3 percent to 14 percent.
Why does inheriting money suddenly cause problems?
People handed wealth without practice often struggle with it. One study found those who inherited around 150,000 dollars were about four times more likely to leave work than those who got under 25,000.
What is a family bank?
It is an opportunity fund where a child applies for money with a plan, their own contribution and a definition of success. Funding can be a gift, a loan or a small family stake, and consequences stay real.
Should children have to sign a prenup before inheriting?
Yes, raised early and calmly, with full disclosure and the partner’s own lawyer. Local law decides whether an agreement is enforceable.
Keep reading
- 15 Investments Rich People Make The Poor Know Nothing About
- 15 Ways to Think About Money
- 15 Ways Teenagers Can Make Money
