Teaching Kids About Money: Bi-Rite Market Owners, Father and Son

This Narratively “longread” about the history behind the hip Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco’s Mission District was an intriguing father-son story.

Part of it involved entrepreneurial parents trying to pass on important financial skills to their children, like this excerpt involving the father Ned:

Every day, a group of homeless would line up outside the store, and Ned would feed them a sandwich and soda. No questions asked; no thank you needed. He was generous to his kids, too, but not without strategy or purpose. He’d pay them twenty dollars a day for their work at the market, a decent wage in the ’70s. If the kids agreed to save their earnings in the bank, Ned would double it. If they didn’t, that was all they got. Over the years, each child managed to save $20,000, thanks to Ned’s matching practice. “That’s how I encourage them to work and save money,” Ned says. “Sometimes you have to do your tricky things if you love your children.”

I found it amusing that when his son Sam decided to start his own small business, instead of worrying about him going broke, that actually made him feel more at ease.

“He was excited that I was going to be in control of my own destiny, even though it was a restaurant,” says Sam. “Pursuing entrepreneurship was following a path that he knew, that he was comfortable with.”

I would think most parents would rather their kid go the “safe” route of relying on a professional degree like lawyer, doctor, finance, or engineer.

I enjoy collecting anecdotes like this. Here are past related posts:

• Teaching Kids to be Entrepreneurs: Jack’s Cosmic Hot Dogs
• The Opposite of Spoiled Book Review: Kids and Money
• The Best Advice For A Teenager Looking For a Job
• Charlie Munger on Teaching Character Values in Childhood