If you have kids, your children almost certainly emulate you. Even if you have a teenager who pretends not to know you around his or her friends, there’s still a good chance your teen uses some of the same phrases you do or subconsciously copies your gestures. And perhaps your children have the same temperament, fashion sense and interests as you.

This should provide even more motivation for you to practice good financial habits. If you’re mismanaging your money, you may be setting up your child to make the same mistakes. In fact, in the National Foundation for Credit Counseling’s 2014 financial literacy survey, which polled 2,016 adults throughout the country, the majority of people said they learned the most about personal finance at home or from their parents. Maybe more troubling: Forty-one percent of respondents gave themselves a grade of C, D or F for their grasp of personal finance.

With that in mind, here are six bad financial habits to avoiding passing on to your kids.

Buying things you really can’t afford. Your kid wants something at the store. You don’t have the money, and you relay that fact. This is good — you’re teaching your child that there is no always-flowing money spigot. But your kid keeps pushing, but not in a bratty, whiny way, so you buckle and buy the item despite your lack of funds.

You’ve just taught your kid a lesson, and maybe not a good one. “If a child keeps asking for an item and ultimately gets it due to persistent behavior when they know the parent is reluctant, this only teaches the child to want for things when the funds aren’t necessarily comfortable,” says Jason Tate, who owns an investment advisory firm in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

Of course, the purchase matters, too. If you bought school supplies when your funds were low, you just taught your child that some things, like an education, are worth spending on even when money is tight. But no such luck if you bought a toy.

Never using coupons. You aren’t a bad parent if you don’t use coupons. You just aren’t someone who shops with coupons. That may describe your kid someday, too. If you want to teach him or her about creative ways to save money that are relatively easy, coupons are generally a good place to start.

Never comparison-shopping. Or, at least, never engaging your children in your search. Comparing products and prices is a good way to show kids how to think critically about what they’re buying, which will come in handy as they grow older and start shopping on their own.

“You should shop at home using the Internet seeking the lowest price and have your kids help you since they’re better at searching than you are,” says Harlan Platt, professor of finance at Northeastern University in Boston. He suggests talking beforehand about how much money the family can spend, which will engage the kids even more.

Impulse shopping. Do you fill up your shopping cart without any forethought? Again, not using a shopping list doesn’t make you a bad parent, but you may be passing along your lack of organization to your kids.

How important is a shopping list? It may be extremely important, or not so much. In 2012, the Integer Group and M/A/R/C Research came out with a study called “The Checkout,” which found that even when shoppers use a shopping list, 9 out of 10 consumers still buy items that aren’t on their list. So think about how consumers probably fare when they have no list at all.

Be aware that the checkout counter of a grocery store, pharmacy or department store is a place your kids are especially soaking up your impulse-shopping habits. A study conducted by EHI Retail Institute found checkout zones with a lot of sugary candies, gum and treats, on average, make up more than 7 percent of store sales, even though they only take up 1 percent of the store’s space.

Buying things you wouldn’t want your kids to buy someday. Do you smoke or drink too much soda? Or maybe beer? Or maybe you buy a coffee every day?

Not that all of these things are terrible. People love their coffee, after all, and caffeine is known to have health benefits. Still, we’ve all heard the advice that we would save a fortune if we didn’t buy that daily cup of coffee. According to research released in 2012 from Accounting Principals, a finance and staffing firm headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, half of American workers spend almost $1,000 a year on coffee.

You may be fine with the idea of your child someday spending a small fortune at the local coffeehouse, especially if that means you don’t have to give up your caffeine. But if you wish you didn’t spend so much on any particular vice, you have a good excuse to try and stop — it may benefit your kids.

Never discussing money. If you aren’t regularly talking about your finances with your kids, they could start to get the impression that money is easier to make and hang onto than it actually is.

“Kids don’t see their parents actively doing a budget, setting and achieving financial goals or reading books on money,” laments Joey Fehrman, a certified financial adviser based in New York City and author of a finance adventure novel, “Pirates of Financial Freedom.” In other words, Fehrman says, “Kids don’t see their parents proactively taking control of their financial life.”

Tate agrees. “People spend more time planning their vacations than their retirements, and in children’s terms, the children spend more time telling us what they want at the store — their equivalent of vacations — than spending time organizing their next money-earning opportunity.”

If you don’t break the pattern, he says, “The self-perpetuating cycle will continue.”

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6 Bad Financial Habits You’re Passing On to Your Kids originally appeared on usnews.com