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Self-made millionaire Barbara Corcoran: I insisted my kids ‘work real jobs'—it built ‘satisfaction and confidence'

Barbara Corcoran says this one tactic has helped her buy multiple vacation homes.
Eric Mccandless | Disney General Entertainment Content | Getty Images

Barbara Corcoran made it a point to not raise spoiled, entitled kids, even though she's a self-made millionaire.

"I've often insisted they work real jobs in the summer and sometimes after school, as I think it's the best way to teach them independence and self-pride," she wrote in a recent Q&A to her Patreon community, "Barbara in Your Pocket." "I've also allowed my kids to fail on occasion instead of swooping in to make things easier."

The 75-year-old "Shark Tank" star sold The Corcoran Group for $66 million in 2001 and has two kids: Tom, co-founder of real estate firm Terra Capital, and Kate, a freshman in college. As they grew up, she made sure to apply some of her own life lessons to her parenting philosophy.

"We had 10 kids in our family and we were all expected to work early to help out the family," the New Jersey-native wrote. "We were allowed to fail and learned to recover on our own because our parents couldn't prop us up. I got to raise two rich kids and wanted them to feel the same satisfaction and confidence I did."

Corcoran's son "worked a summer job making cold calls 8 hours a day," which taught him how to weather rejection, she wrote. Her daughter worked two hours a week at a dog spa, cleaning kennels and walking peoples' pets for $10 an hour, she said in 2018.

Kate later got a $2.50 raise, giving her a sense of pride. At the time, Kate had about $200 in the bank, which she was saving to buy a car one day.

"Getting a kid a job early on, versus another day camp or something, is more important than education in the schoolhouse, which parents are very willing to spend a ton of money on," Corcoran said.

Teaching your children about financial literacy at a young age is a great way to set them up for success, according to parenting expert Margot Machol Bisnow, who interviewed the parents of 70 highly successful adults for her 2022 book, "Raising an Entrepreneur: How to Help Your Children Achieve Their Dreams."

"Although the parents I spoke to never pushed their kids towards pursuing a high-paying job, all of them made an effort to teach their kids about money in one form or another," Bisnow wrote for CNBC Make It in 2022. 

In her Q&A, Corcoran offered some advice to other parents who grew up pinching pennies and are now raising kids with a lot more cash. "Don't feel bad … about sending your kids to private school," she wrote, or giving them access to other privileges. The most important thing is for them to appreciate what they've got and know that it came through hard work.

And "make sure you let them stumble a bit, and as hard as it may be," she wrote. "Don't swoop in with help the moment the going gets tough."

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