What to Do When Your Child Asks About Your Income Of all the money questions that our kids will eventually ask, the inquiry about our income may be the toughest one of all to answer. Why, exactly, do they want to know how much money we make? And what are they going to do with the information?! Answering hard questions with more questions is a perfectly good parenting (and stalling) tactic, as long as the response doesn't sound like an accusation (see exclamation point above). A change in tone, after all, could suggest that we find their curiosity off-putting, even though their primary job is to spend a couple of decades figuring out how the world works. Any discussion of tactics in answering this question is in part an affluent person's conceit. In families that don't have enough money to provide everything kids need, income and expenses are an everyday reality that is part of the air kids breathe. There, children will usually know sooner rather than later what the constraints are, what it takes to live within them and how older children might help make things easier. But for people in the luxurious position of not living hand-to-mouth, here are five things to consider before trying to answer the big income question. 1) READINESS It's probably pointless to give a straight answer on income to a child who hasn't gotten beyond three figures in math class. The same thing is true with a 10- or 12-year-old math whiz if you haven't yet explained to them all of the costs involved in your daily life. Context matters, a lot. "There is no transparency without readiness, which is the mastery of basic skills and basic language that gives you the ability to make sense of the information," said Joline Godfrey, an author and consultant to wealthy families struggling with their own financial disclosure questions. I think this is the hardest of parenting skills to grasp. Every parent wants to know when a child is ready, as though there is a standard hour and age, and there just isn't. I pressed her further on this, and she conceded that she does know a 13-year-old who is ready for full financial disclosure. Then, she told me about the call she got from a lawyer with a 90-year-old client who was certain that a 70-year-old daughter was not going to be able to handle the information. 2) AVAILABLE INFORMATION Curious, determined children can and will find out plenty if they set their minds to it. If you work for a nonprofit organization, your income may be on the publicly available 990 tax form if you're one of the most highly compensated people there. The same thing is true at publicly traded companies with their own federal disclosure forms. Ditto if you're a public employee in many places. If your kids know what Google is, they can find this stuff. Also, if you're going to be applying for financial aid for college, all will probably be revealed then. That's because you'll likely need to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. There, you'll disclose your income and assets, and your child will need to sign it. Then come the inevitable follow-ups. Why don't you earn more? Or why don't we have more, if you earn so much? One good place to start that conversation is with a maxim deployed by Jon Gallo, an author and estate-planning lawyer. "The fundamental concept is that money is something that people have, not who they are," he said. 3) BAD AVAILABLE INFORMATION Determined kids will also inevitably get the wrong idea from whomever they are talking to or whatever information source they're tapping. Brent Kessel, a founder and co-chief executive of a financial planning firm called Abacus, discovered this recently when his 13-year-old son visited salary.com and decided that his father must be making $700,000 a year. He isn't, and Mr. Kessel worries in general about children getting a distorted view of the resources available to their families. "He wanted it badly," Mr. Kessel said of his son's online quest for the number. He only gets two hours of screen time, and that's on the weekend. He was giving up movies! A disclosure: My family works with another Abacus partner. 4) SHUTDOWNS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES Even for those of us who agree with the basic principle that curiosity is a virtue in children, our own upbringing may have taught us that personal money questions are rude. If we silence our kids, however, we may send another message. "I certainly don't trust you, and I don't know when I can trust you," said Ms. Godfrey, rattling off the reactions that a child might have to being shut up in this fashion. "Parents may mean well and couch it in loving terms, but what you're doing is undermining kids" faith in themselves." 5) ANSWERING WITHOUT LYING (WITHOUT TELLING) For children who seem worried about an overheard conversation or disagreement about money, you can show them all of the expenses for the basic things your family needs. Then, you might tell them what you have saved or reassure them by talking about all of the people who could help you if your family was struggling financially. Other curious children may be trying to figure out what they would need to earn to have a life as an adult like the one they have as a teenager. In that case, you could talk about salaries for jobs like the ones they're interested in, deflecting the conversation away from the jobs you have. Or, if you have a child on your hands who is truly ready, you could just answer the question without a lot of heavy breathing. For those of you who have, what's actually happened afterward? And if you would never do that in a million years, what's stopping you exactly?