Sarah Michelle Gellar Reveals How She’s Passing on a Healthy Attitude About Money to Her Kids (Exclusive)

Sarah Michelle Gellar is working hard to pass on her healthy relationship with money to her kids. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer actress, who shares daughter Charlotte, 14, and son Rocky, 11, with husband Freddie Prinze Jr., opened up to PopCulture.com about growing up with a “very different” experience with finances as a child actress and how she’s making sure her kids are set up with a financial education even at their age. 

“I think growing up, I was still in the age where money was taboo to talk about,” Gellar explained. “I think my mom didn’t always want to have those discussions because she didn’t want me to know how dire our situation probably was when I was growing up.” As a working child actress before making her debut on All My Children as a teenager, Gellar knows she had a “very different experience” making money than most people, but she credits her understanding of the importance of responsible saving and spending to her experiences on the soap. 

“In those days, there were two ways that you could get paid. You either got paid per episode you worked, which was great if you were in a big storyline [and] you were getting paychecks five days a week for months on end, but then all of a sudden your storyline would die down and maybe you’d work twice a month and the only income you would have would be those two days,” she recalled. “Or, you could get paid what your guarantee was. Maybe you were guaranteed one-and-a-half episodes a week or two episodes a week, and then anything you worked over that in the month was for savings. And it was an unpopular way to do it. But at a young age, my mom suggested that I do it that way, and I did.”

Learning “very early” about budgeting her money and saving the rest was a “game changer,” and it set the tone for her relationship with finances throughout her career. It’s something she’s actively working to encourage with her kids. “Since they were little, they’ve had the three jars with the ‘Spend,’ ‘Save,’ and ‘Donate’ [labels] to open up a conversation about what it’s like to save up for something you want or the fact that there are people that need in the world and how important it is to donate to those who are less fortunate.”

As her daughter has gotten into her teens, however, conversations about giving her access to a credit card took Gellar off-guard, especially when it came to the prevalence of cash-free locales. That’s when the Cruel Intentions actress found the Fidelity Youth app, which handles saving, spending, and investing for teens under 18. “It has the independence for her so that she can take accountability, be responsible, but I have the parental oversight to know where it’s going and how she’s using it and what she’s learning,” said Gellar, who has partnered with the app. 

Providing accurate and age-appropriate finance lessons within the app, Gellar said she feels confident that her daughter is getting set up for success. “Especially having a daughter, because you see these studies where families still generally have more [finance] conversations with men than women,” she explained. “You talk about getting credit cards and the statistics show that the boys answer eager and the girls answer nervous. And we want to have an equal playing field. We want women to feel just as independent and confident about money, saving, spending, all of that as we give the same opportunity to our boys.”