A Quick Guide on How to Teach Your Kids About Money

Monopoly might be the most accurate representation of life ever made, even more so than The Game of Life. The game teaches you how to budget your starting income until you get your next “paycheck,” buy property, and how to unwillingly give up your money to pay taxes.

If you’re wanting to teach your kids about money it’s the game to buy. If you want to do more than just play a game for hours on end, here are a few tips to help teach your kids about money.

Start young

You can teach many simple money terms to your child when they’re still fairly young. By age 5 you can show them what a savings goal is and the difference between long term goals, like the bike they want this summer, to short term goals like the candy bar they saw in the store checkout line the other day.

You can also teach them about banks, bills, checks, and what a trade-off means. Kids are smart, and they’ll be even smarter with money management skills.

Make it fun

Remember that really boring time you learned an important lesson? Yeah, probably not.

When you’re passing your knowledge on, you have to make sure the lesson is fun and engaging or else they won’t remember.

Try having your child make the grocery list and check off the items as they find them in the store. While there, ask them to look at different brands and choose which one they think is the better value. Making the lesson hands on will grab their attention more than a simple lecture.

Have them help with the bills

Your kids probably can’t contribute to the amount due at the end of the month – although you would really appreciate it – but they can learn what a bill looks like by helping you open them. Have them circle the due date and the amount due. If all your bills are online now, print a few off to show them what it looks like.

Involving them in the bill process will help provide them with an appreciation for basic living expenses.

Teach them the value of the dollar

There are many ways to teach your children how valuable the dollar truly is.

Firstly, use cash as much as possible when you’re with them. Although the rewards you earn from your credit card points are nice, cash is a visual representation of money leaving your hand in exchange for a good or service. If you use a credit card too often, you may send mixed messages to your child making them think the card is magic and it can buy whatever they want without consequence – wouldn’t that be nice.

Secondly, you could give them an allowance. It’s a good way to for kids to learn how to handle money on their own. As they get older, decrease the amount or offer it on a bi-weekly basis rather than weekly to teach them how to extend their earnings, plan, and save.

Turn every moment into a learning opportunity

Money management is a life skill and takes decades to master. The sooner you teach your kids about money, the more time they’ll have to perfect it.

The easiest way to teach, treat every moment as a learning opportunity…and buy Monopoly; it’s the most honest game of life there is and your kids won’t relate back to it until they’re older.

What other ideas will you use to teach your kids about money?