Money Talks: How to Raise Financially Confident Kids With Dawn Thomas

By Molly Benjamin, Founder of Ladies Finance Club

Listen to the full podcast here.

In this episode of Get Rich, I sat down with award-winning financial adviser Dawn Thomas for a conversation that every parent needs to hear. Equal parts practical and heartfelt, they unpacked what it really takes to raise children who are financially literate, emotionally grounded around money, and genuinely set up to thrive. Whether you’re a seasoned investor or still figuring out your own relationship with money, this one lands differently.

It Starts With You (Not a Curriculum)

One of the first things Dawn introduced in the conversation was the concept of Family Financial Socialisation, a theory about how money habits, behaviours, and beliefs pass from one generation to the next. And here’s the thing that hit hardest: your kids are watching everything. The way you react when the grocery bill comes up. The tone in your voice when a bill arrives. Whether money is spoken about openly or in hushed tones behind closed doors.

"Money behaviour can be transferred from one generation to the next," Dawn explained. Which means the most powerful financial education you can give your child isn’t a lesson plan. It’s the money mindset you model every single day.

The good news? You don’t need to be a financial adviser to get this right. According to Dawn, when you start doing the work on your own financial wellbeing; reading, learning, shifting your relationship with money, that flows naturally down to your kids. They feel the shift, even when you’re not explicitly teaching them anything.

The Words We Use Matter More Than We Think

This part of the conversation was genuinely eye-opening. Most of us grew up hearing phrases like "we can’t afford that" or "that’s a waste of money" and many of us are now saying the exact same things to our own kids without realising the impact.

Dawn was refreshingly honest here: even as a financial adviser, she’s caught herself in these traps at home. The shift she encourages is moving away from language of scarcity and towards language of choice. Instead of “we can’t afford it,” try “we’re choosing to spend our money on something else right now.” Instead of “that’s too expensive,” ask your child “what value do you think this will actually give you?”

It might sound like a small tweak, but the difference is significant. Scarcity language teaches kids that money is something scary and finite. Choice language teaches them that money is a tool you can direct intentionally. That’s the foundation of good family finance and it costs nothing to implement.

Teaching Delayed Gratification in an Instant World

I raised something that so many parents are quietly wrestling with: how on earth do you teach a child about patience and saving when they’re growing up in a world where food arrives at the door in 20 minutes, packages from Amazon turn up the next day, and buy-now-pay-later is just one tap away?

Dawn’s answer was simple and practical. When a child wants something, help them build a savings plan to get there. The act of waiting, of earning and accumulating and then spending intentionally is one of the most valuable lessons in kids and money. Research consistently shows that the ability to delay gratification is a strong predictor of financial success later in life.

Dawn also shared how she manages spending at home with her own kids, including setting up bank accounts where she controls transfers from savings, and limiting daily spending to help slow things down. It’s not about control for its own sake. It’s about giving kids training wheels while they’re still learning to ride.

Being Open About the Hard Stuff

With the cost of living biting harder than ever, I asked what so many parents are wondering: do we hide our financial stress from our kids, or do we let them in on what’s happening? Dawn’s answer was clear, openness is everything.

Your children are going to face financial hardship at some point in their own lives. The question is whether they’ll have the skills and emotional resilience to navigate it. Letting them experience and observe difficult periods, in an age-appropriate way, is part of their financial education. Dawn told her own kids that extra hockey gear was off the table for now and explained why – not as a lecture, but as a conversation about essentials versus wants, and about making intentional choices with limited resources.

Kids can sense tension around money regardless. Naming it, and framing it as a challenge you’re navigating together, is far more powerful than pretending everything is fine.

Investing for Kids: What You Actually Need to Know

This is where the conversation got practical in a really useful way. Dawn covered some of the biggest tax traps Australian parents fall into when investing for their children, and they’re more common than you’d think.

The core issue is what’s called unearned income, money children earn through investing rather than working. The ATO places strict limits on this, precisely because it doesn’t want parents sheltering income in their kids’ names for a tax benefit. If a child earns more than a small threshold in unearned income, they can be taxed at penalty rates. It catches a lot of well-meaning parents off guard.

Some more tax-effective structures to explore include investment bonds or education bonds, where earnings are taxed at a company rate rather than landing on you or your child personally. For parents investing with a medium-to-long-term horizon, superannuation can also be a useful vehicle given its favourable tax treatment internally. And if you’re using share platforms that allow informal trust structures in a child’s name, Dawn recommends getting clear on where the tax liability actually sits, because this area is, as she put it, genuinely grey.

As always with personal finance, the right answer depends on your circumstances. But being aware of the traps is the first step to avoiding them.

Let Them Learn From Financial Pain Too

One of the more unexpected moments in the episode came when I asked whether parents should let their kids experience financial pain. Dawn’s answer was a warm yes. Failure isn’t the enemy of good money habits, shame is. When a child makes a poor spending decision or picks a losing stock, that’s not a disaster. That’s a lesson. The goal is to process it together, without judgment, and ask what they’d do differently.

I laughed about her own experience picking individual shares and learning the hard way that ETFs are far more her style. It’s a reminder that financial confidence doesn’t come from always getting it right. It comes from building enough experience to know yourself.

Are We Raising Financially Literate Kids or Just Good Consumers?

Dawn didn’t sugarcoat this one. The data on financial literacy among young Australians is not encouraging. Despite their savviness in so many other areas, many young people lack the foundational knowledge and capability to make sound financial decisions. Part of the reason, Dawn suggested, is generational; the parents of today’s kids are still unpacking their own money stories. We haven’t yet had the time or the tools to translate those experiences into open, meaningful conversations at home.

But that’s exactly what episodes like this one are for. Awareness alone can shift the trajectory. When you start noticing the language you use, the emotions you bring to money conversations, and the behaviours you’re modelling, you can begin to change them. And when you change them, so does the next generation.

What made this episode so compelling wasn’t just the financial advice, it was the honesty. Dawn, for all her expertise, is navigating the same messy, real-life conversations with her own teenagers that the rest of us are having. Kids raiding the pantry before the week’s out, reluctance to do chores, arguments about hockey gear. The difference is that she has a framework for turning those everyday moments into genuine financial socialisation.

You don’t need a perfect money story to raise financially confident children. You just need to be willing to have the conversation.

Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts, and if you’re looking for a trusted financial adviser or mortgage broker to help put any of this into action, check out the new Ladies Finance Club Directory.