Ms McQueen has written Pocket Money to Property, which is about how to create children who will go to be financially independent adults.
She will be in Dunedin on Monday to talk at a seminar about some of the lessons she learned from her own parents and from helping bring up her own children.
In an interview with the Otago Daily Times, Ms McQueen said there were three reasons she decided to write the book.
Her own children were ‘‘entitled’’ and she needed to deal with that. The clients she worked with her company, enableMe, were working hard to become mortgage free but their adult children kept being a problem.
And the last reason was her dealings with millennials — generally those born in the early 1980s and known as Generation Y — who had little understanding about financial matters and what they needed to survive and thrive.
"A lot of advice out there is out of date for this generation. It is ‘spend less than you earn’ and ‘when you have money, invest’. While that advice is still sound, it does nothing to tell them how to get on the ladder."
The conditions of work were different now from two generations ago, she said.
"I want to start a conversation. These questions are a little bit confrontational, but they are big things that need to be asked."
Often parents stood in the way of their children developing the appropriate financial and life skills.
Two generations ago, tertiary education was free. Now it could cost between $50,000 and $60,000 to study and there was no guarantee a job would follow the degree.
Young people did not have the networks to transition to jobs and use the degree.
Her own grandfather did not have to go to school to end up owning a lot of property. That was unlikely to be possible now, she said.
The book had a lot of advice for people on reasonable incomes who could encourage their children to work for their pocket money and save for holidays. She even planned out an annual budget where the family members contributed to living expenses through pocket money.
There were ways people on low incomes could help their children rise through the ranks.Those at the middle to bottom end of the income scale had to be brutally honest with their children.
They had to acknowledge their position and tell their children they were not happy about that kind of future for them.
"These aren’t nice conversations to have. But they need to talk about how to increase the odds for you to be successful. Education is the ticket for some."
There were too many people at the bottom who accounted for too little of the wealth. Many of those people did not have the right networks to help their children into housing or education. Also, parents were often time poor or had problems dealing with their own issues and were unable to have the right conversations with their children. In the book, Ms McQueen talks about giving to various ventures such as a person’s church or charities or helping others reach their goals. She gives an example of a boy who was gifted at sport but his mother lacked the resources to help lift him to the next level.
Ms McQueen and her family decided to meet the boy and his mother.
"This is not about handouts — it is about earning his own money. We want him to believe he is capable of success."
Eight months after the meeting, the boy and his friend were in the media talking about importing finger spinners, the latest craze for young people.It was his own initiative designed to show he was committed to the process, Ms McQueen said. Ms McQueen encouraged parents to explain to their children the things they had done wrong financially and the things they had done right right, rather than just telling everything would be OK.
