Our parents are the first teachers we ever have. They taught us how to brush our teeth, how to use a toilet, and how to dress ourselves. But there were some things that maybe they didn’t mean to teach us that we still learned anyway—how to communicate, how to express emotions, and how to feel about money.

Growing up, my dad knew exactly what lessons he wanted to teach his kids. He came from a long line of business owners, and he wanted us to know how to appreciate, value, and invest our own money. But to be successful with these lessons, he first needed the family to be on the same page with expectations, what we value, and why.

My dad started by identifying who we were as a family and what was important to us. He taught us our family values through out-loud family sayings and family laws. Out-loud family sayings were the foundation of my dad’s very intentional teaching and parenting, and they were based on us acting on something, like “I can do it” and “Do your best.” And our family laws were short, simple, and didn’t have to change based on our different ages:

Peace, Asking, Order, Respect, and Obedience.

These family sayings and laws are forever engraved in my mind, reminding me of what was important to learn. They gave my dad the foundation he needed to teach us everything he wanted us to know. And the greatest thing my dad taught me, that you can teach your own kids, was that I could have the security and positive relationship with money that most people dream of having.

When kids don’t learn about finances, only 13% report a high level of confidence in their finances as adults. View survey results.

Hands-on experiences

We had our family lessons every Saturday morning and they were only about 30 minutes long. They were short and sweet so they were easy to remember. My dad made it simple, fun, and relatable to whatever it was that we were going through.

Along with these weekend times, my dad was very intentional in giving his kids hands-on experiences, especially around money. Whenever he had a meeting with an accountant or a stock broker or a lawyer, he had us get dressed to take the meeting, and we sat in to learn how to speak with these kinds of professionals. This has been incredibly impactful in my life today, as I found a career as a financial advisor and have every confidence to run my own business and family’s finances successfully.

Not only did my dad do an amazing job at setting our family foundation while making it really fun, it was never hard. Nothing ever felt too big and he didn’t use large words. He took these huge concepts and complex ideas and filtered it all down to bite-size pieces for us kids.

Adults who learned about money as a child are 3 times as likely to have a personal annual income of $75k or higher. Get the stats.

Teaching the value of money

The training and the education that I got from my dad have put me far ahead of my peers. I had a lot of life experience and spent time in many different jobs, making me well-rounded, educated, and confident in making major life decisions. I lived in Costa Rica. I was in the financial industry and worked for an accounting firm. And when I was 26, I was empowered to start my own business and do my own thing. I was never afraid. I never felt apprehensive to try something new.

The most important thing you need to know about incorporating my dad’s lessons is: you can do it. If you didn’t receive financial education as a child, that doesn’t mean that you can’t teach it to your own kids. You can. You can change the next generation because you are the parent now. It is possible and it can be fun and easy if you have the structure behind it.

It’s also never too early to start. That’s something people get stuck on. When do I teach them? And what do I say? It’s so much more simple than you think. Even three year olds get it—they can transact, they understand something for something, like sharing or trading. They’re actually great negotiators. In fact, they’re better salespeople than all of us.

Want tips on how to do it? See our top 9 ways to teach kids about the value of money. Explore them here.

It works and I’m proof

My book My Dad’s Class is a way for me to impart all the knowledge, systems, and structure that he taught me. If you can take just one thing from it, just one activity or one system to incorporate into your family life, then this book has done what I hoped it would.

It could have been my dad that wrote this book. After all, he’s the one who did all the teaching. But I wanted to show the parents that are my age the result of a child who experiences My Dad’s Class. I was the Guinea pig. And I can tell you without a doubt the importance of it, how it worked, and why it worked.

Because I lived it. And I’m still living it, better for it.

Quicken users are 3 times more likely than the general population to have “complete confidence” in their financial situation. See what Quicken could do for you.