Want to Teach Your Grandkids About Wise Financial Decisions? I Learned It's More About "Show" Than Tell

If you've ever gone shopping with my wife Jean, you've witnessed something that should probably be studied by economists. She can walk into a store looking for one blouse and somehow leave with three bags, a fistful of reward points, and enough savings to make the cashier question the entire retail pricing system.

Jean doesn't use coupons. She conducts negotiations. In fact, I'm convinced some stores lose money every time she walks through the front door.

Recently, our oldest grandson, Micah, got a front-row seat to one of her master classes. After lunch together, Jean and I decided to stop by Belk and do a little shopping. I found a pair of pants, Jean found a blouse, and before long Micah spotted a hoodie he liked.

Then Jean uttered those famous words that grandparents have been saying for generations:

"Here, let me buy that for you."

Now, if you know Jean, you know that didn't mean she was about to pay full price. Not a chance.

She walked up to the cashier and started asking questions. "I have a coupon that gives me 15% off if I use my card. Can I use that on clearance items?" "I think so." "Great. Can I use my rewards too?"

"Of course."

What happened next looked less like shopping and more like a magic trick. The cashier pressed a few buttons. Jean handed over a coupon. More buttons were pressed. Rewards points appeared.

Additional discounts materialized out of thin air.

A few moments later, the cashier announced, "Your total today is $7.81." After a donation to the Salvation Army, the grand total came to $8.81.

Micah was stunned.

As we walked out of the store, he was laughing so hard he could barely get the words out. "Nana, what just happened in there? I think you got that hoodie for about two bucks!"

A couple of weeks later, we got a phone call. "Nana, I need a new pair of pants for work. Can you text me any Belk coupons you have?" Mission accomplished.

There was another time when Isaac and I were running errands together. He mentioned he was hungry and suggested grabbing a burger. I told him, "Check the envelope in your door. I put some coupons in there."

We both ate for under twelve dollars. He was amazed. I was mostly relieved that the coupons hadn't expired while sitting in my truck long enough to qualify as historical documents.

Then there was the time I gave one of the boys some gas points that were about to expire. He ended up saving nearly a dollar a gallon. You would've thought I'd handed him stock in a Fortune 500 company.

But perhaps my favorite financial lesson started when each of our grandchildren turned 13. Jean and I give them $500 for their birthday.

Now before you nominate us for Grandparents of the Year, there's a catch. They don't get to spend it.

They have to invest it in the market. No video games. No shopping spree. No mysterious Amazon packages showing up on the porch three days later. The money goes into the market, and they get to spend whatever money they make.

The results have been fascinating. One grandchild has turned that original $500 into nearly $8,000.

Another still gets nervous every time the market dips and hasn't invested all of it yet.

And one has managed to lose about half.

You know what? I'm okay with all three outcomes. Because the goal was never simply to make money. The goal was to learn. To learn patience. To learn discipline.j To learn that every investment doesn't go up. To learn that sometimes fear keeps us from taking opportunities. And to learn that occasionally we make decisions that don't work out the way we hoped.

Those lessons are worth far more than the original $500. And I suspect they'll remember them a lot longer than they would remember another birthday gift.

And our granddaughter Layla loves shopping with Nana at Bath & Body Works because, as she likes to say, "Nana always gets the best deals."

The funny thing is, I don't remember ever sitting our grandkids down for a lecture on budgeting, coupons, reward points, investing, or how to stretch a dollar. What they remember is watching.

They watched Nana turn a routine shopping trip into something that looked suspiciously like a retail heist—only legal.

They watched Papaw refuse to pay full price for a burger when a coupon was sitting in the glove compartment.

They watched us look for value instead of impulse.

They watched us treat money as a tool instead of a toy.

And somewhere along the way, they started doing some of the same things.

Which brings me to something much bigger than coupons. As grandparents, parents, and mentors, we often spend a lot of time trying to tell people what matters.

We tell them to save money.

We tell them to work hard.

We tell them to be generous.

We tell them to put God first.

We tell them how a good marriage works.

And there is certainly a place for those conversations. But the older I get, the more convinced I become that people learn far more from what they see than from what they hear.

Our grandkids may forget a lecture, but they rarely forget an example.

They remember how we treated people when nobody was watching.

They remember whether we kept our word.

They remember how we handled adversity.

They remember whether our actions matched our beliefs.

And those observations often shape them far more than our advice ever could.

The Last Best Bite

When it comes to teaching our children and grandchildren about money, faith, marriage, work ethic, generosity, and life itself, it's usually more about show than tell.

The truth is, many of the most important lessons we'll ever teach are lessons we never realize we're teaching. Someone is always watching.

So the question isn't simply, "What am I telling my grandchildren?" The better question may be, "What am I showing them?" Because years from now, they may not remember our speeches. But they will remember our example.

And if you're really lucky, one day you'll get a phone call asking for your coupons. Or maybe a call asking which stock you think they should buy next. Either way, you'll know they were paying attention all along.

Last Best Bite: The greatest lessons we pass on to our children and grandchildren rarely come from our lectures. They come from our example. Long after they've forgotten what we told them, they'll remember what we showed them. We need to make sure we're giving them something worth remembering.