Leong Hiew, an Australia-based father, noticed something while setting pocket money rules for his sons: the boundaries he'd already drawn around screen time mapped almost perfectly onto healthy money habits. So he combined them.
The result is a five-rule framework that reads less like parental decree and more like a personal operating system. And it works just as well for adults staring at their own spending and scrolling habits.
The Five Rules
Money and tech are tools, not happiness. This is the premise everything else hangs on. Both can help you build skills, stay connected, or solve problems. Neither will make you feel genuinely good. That comes from kindness, effort, and time with people who matter.
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Start Your News DetoxDo important things first. Sleep, food, movement, family, responsibilities — these have no exceptions. Everything else waits. It's simple advice that most of us ignore while refreshing our bank apps or social feeds.
Learn small before doing big. Hiew practices this deliberately with his kids: spend $2 before $20, try small apps before big platforms. You learn what you can actually handle. For adults, this might mean testing a new financial tool with $100 before automating your entire paycheck, or limiting a new app to 15 minutes before it becomes background noise for three hours.
Healthy signs get more, warning signs get less. If money or tech use starts triggering hiding, tantrums, or obsession, it goes. Not as punishment — as information. Your own behavior is telling you something's off balance.
Your job is to be yourself. Children shouldn't solve adult financial stress. Adults shouldn't chase a teenager's version of success. Everyone stays in their lane, which protects both innocence and sanity.
What strikes about these rules is how they strip away the noise. They're not about deprivation or discipline for its own sake. They're about structure — the kind that actually lets you breathe. Hiew emphasizes this: routine and clear boundaries don't constrain kids, they ground them. They create safety. They build trust.
The same applies when you're 35 and trying to figure out why you feel perpetually behind, or why your relationship with money feels anxious, or why you can't put your phone down. The rules don't change. The stakes just get quieter.
Hiew released the full policy as a free, editable document for families. But read it as an adult. You might recognize yourself in the rules you're breaking.
