There was a Wall Street Journal commercial I remember seeing as a kid. Part of their “Adventures in Capitalism” campaign. (link at the bottom)
I remember thinking: Can a newspaper really make you successful?
What’s interesting is, I wasn’t the target audience. Just like the E*TRADE baby wasn’t made for babies.
But that’s the thing about good advertising. Sometimes it reaches the people watching from the edge of the room.
As a kid, I didn’t see those ads as finance marketing. I saw possibility.
Could that be me?
We do this in every field we value.
A young gymnast watches Simone Biles. A young violinist watches Christian Li. A young chess player watches Abhimanyu Mishra.
And suddenly the impossible feels a little closer.
Not because every child will become world-class.
But because exposure changes what feels reachable.
So why is money different?
Why do we treat it like something children should only encounter once they’re older, after the habits and assumptions are already formed?
We hand kids a basketball before they can dribble. We put crayons in their hands before they can draw. We let them fall off skateboards, bikes, monkey bars.
We understand instinctively that confidence is built through early interaction.
Money should not be exempt from that idea.
I think many adults unintentionally give money an almost forbidden quality. Too important. Too serious. Too adult.
But hiding something from children does not make them wiser about it later.
It usually just makes it unfamiliar.
I’m not talking about turning childhood into a finance seminar.
I’m talking about access.
The chance for a child to handle value, make choices, make mistakes, wait for something, trade for something, lose something, earn something.
To make money feel understandable instead of mysterious.
Because sometimes the most important learning moments look very small.
A missed trade. A saved token. A bad decision. A second try.
The same way a parent remembers the first bike ride or the first skateboard landing.
“I remember when she dusted herself off, got back up, and landed it.”
That feeling matters.
And maybe money deserves a place in childhood earlier than we’ve allowed ourselves to believe.
https://youtu.be/loevpBUYgFQ?si=zUkTSg0LbyHIDXa_