Your Investments: Greatest danger to Israel's moral mission is prosperity without discipline

This seems to be the Bible’s first sustained discussion of intergenerational transfer – not only of land and blessing, but of values. While the family of Yaakov is economically secure, the parsha is strikingly unconcerned with how wealth is produced. Instead, it is deeply concerned with what wealth produces in children.

Throughout the book of Genesis, Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary emphasizes, material success is spiritually neutral. Its value depends entirely on what it produces in human character.

On Jacob’s blessing of his grandchildren, Ephraim and Menashe, Rav Hirsch explains that Yaakov deliberately blesses children raised amid Egyptian wealth and power to demonstrate that Torah values can survive prosperity – but only through conscious education. In other words, the greatest danger to the moral mission of Israel is not poverty, but prosperity without discipline.

In a few days, we will celebrate our son turning 17. He’s a good boy. He’s about to get his driver’s license and is in his hardest year of high school, 11th grade, the year with the most matriculation exams.

Which brings us to our annual dilemma of a birthday present. His choice of a good gift would be an airline ticket to Italy to watch a Champions League soccer game, or a car for the license he’s about to get. While 17 is a milestone, he’s not about to get either one of those as a gift!

Nevertheless, as I have mentioned previously, I believe that a mandatory personal finance course could really be beneficial. Our older son took one in 10th grade, and it was amazing.

I applaud his school for making it mandatory. They learned all the basics about how bank accounts and credit cards work, and the dangers inherent to them, and the need to budget and be responsible with money.

The fact is that this course will serve him better in life than practically everything else he has learned in high school. Unfortunately, that was an outlier; none of our other kids had the same fortune.

Teenagers need to learn responsible money habits. Just like most things in life, if kids learn the right lessons, they will have a much easier time being financially responsible. If they see bad money habits in the home and are never shown how to properly deal with money, chances are that they will make costly financial decisions when they get older.

One of the issues I struggle with is what to buy for older kids and what to get them to buy with their own money. On the one hand, they are still at home and dependent on us for most things financially.

On the other hand, they have worked and now actually have their own money, and if they “need” something, why shouldn’t they buy it themselves? Funny things happen when that is suggested. Often, the “need” is no longer so important.

Helping teens understand the difference between a need and something they want is paramount. How many adults confuse the two terms! If kids are encouraged to be able to differentiate between the two, a lot of financial stress will be avoided in adulthood.

It’s important to teach your children the importance of saving. I think that teens should have a bank account. They can learn how compound interest works.

Most importantly, they will learn that they can continue lying on the couch playing on their phones and earn money. That just may be a big motivator to get them to earn and save more. It’s the ultimate lesson in passive income.

A few years ago, I wrote about a family with a special idea for teaching their kids how to budget. They would give their teenagers around NIS 500 (worth a lot more in those days) and put them in charge of weekly food shopping. They would have to decide among themselves what the family needed and then figure out how much it cost.

In the first few weeks ,they consumed a lot of Fruity Pebbles and ice cream, and they never had enough money left for all the basics. Then they figured it out and started shopping more wisely, and began getting their fruit intake from more natural sources.

If you have good tips to teach teens smart money habits, feel free to email me.

(Happy 17th birthday, YK!)

The information contained in this article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of Portfolio Resources Group, Inc. or its affiliates.