



The Financial Lessons Kids Learn From Watching Their Parents Get Divorced
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.This week, we’re bringing you stories about the financial impact of divorce.Olivia Kelly grew up watching her mother make her pizza and chicken enchiladas. Then, in middle school, her parents got divorced, and the kitchen transformed into a small business.Her mother went from stay-at-home mom to working parent with a handful of side hustles. The home-cooked dinners became workweek to-go meals that friends and their nannies would buy for around $35 apiece.As Kelly’s mother changed, so did she.
The quotidian aspects of teenage life came to offer personal financial lessons. Seek stable income. Save as much as you can.
Proactively manage your money. Kelly, who distributed the to-go meals with her sister, sensed that family finances could be a team sport.“She wanted us to be able to be financially independent and just independent in general,” said Kelly, now a 25-year-old musician in New York.Divorce is a significant moment in the financial lives of splitting spouses, and it filters to their children who see it play out in their formative years. Kids see their parents fight about money during divorce proceedings.
They watch their parents tighten their belts once they are no longer sharing expenses with an ex. They see moms and dads take diverging tracks in managing their finances. Many say they picked the example of one or the other.Nearly a third of American children experience parental divorce before adulthood, according to census data, and the share of kids living with single parents has steadily risen over the past few generations.“There’s been really dramatic shifts in the household that children grow up in,” said Nolan Pope, associate professor of economics at the University of
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