When it comes to money, it’s never too early to start learning about how it works. The sooner that you expose your children to important fiscal lessons, the sooner they will begin to adapt to the world around them. Like it or not, money makes the world around.
Knowing how to use money to your advantage may not necessarily bring you happiness, but it can certainly make your life a lot more comfortable. As a parent, one of the most valuable things that you can give your child a head start. Some kids who learned about money early, have an idea about how to claim deductions on their taxes, establish credit, and even invest in the stock market by the time they’re seniors in high school. Here are some of the best ways to start teaching your kids about money.
Play Simulation Games
Kids learn best when you manage to make the lesson fun! Start playing games that involve money as early as possible. Not only do games like Monopoly help with basic addition and subtraction skills, but it’s also a great way to bond!
You can even think outside of the box and create scenarios of your own such as cashier, bank teller, and even accountant!
Bring Your Child To The Grocery Store
One of the most common reasons that kids and teenagers have no concept of the value of a dollar is because they’ve never been forced to! Taking your child to the grocery store and teaching them how to work within a budget will teach them that nothing in life is free,
Don’t be afraid to get them involved in adding up everything that you’ve put in your cart. If at the end, you don’t have enough money for everything, let them solve the problem by deducting items!
Open a Bank Account For Your Child’s Allowance
An allowance is a great way to encourage your child to earn and save. Rather than giving them money, an allowance earned through doing chores can be an incredibly effective way to teach them how to manage money. When they reach a certain amount of savings, consider opening up their own bank account, so they can learn how to make their money grow.
Encourage Generosity
In addition to teaching your child how to manage money and increase their wealth, don’t forget to teach them the value of sharing their wealth as well.
As your kids get older, they’ll use the money smarts that you taught them at a young age. It’s likely that their peers who haven’t been given the same exposure to how money works from a young age will be struggling to manage their money. However, your child will be lightyears ahead of others their age.
Great ideas! We have a bank account for the kids but haven’t really thought about what to do with it as they get older, interesting notion to let them know about it and actively make deposits into it so they understand the money is theirs and is being saved.
We’ve always been on a tight budget, so our kids have been learning about money and how to work hard for it for a long time! One of the most effective ways is bringing them to the grocery store, I love that you have that here! There are so many ways to teach them about money when you bring them to get groceries. My older kids are sometimes shocked to see how much more things cost than they realized.
I love this idea! We’ve had a savings account for my daughter since she was three. We put money in there for her every month as her allowence for her age appropriate chores. We even save change from our day to day tasks and put in into her piggy bank and once her piggy bank is full we go to our bank and deposite the money into her savings account.
These are great tips. Both of our kids have college savings accounts. They are both pretty responsible with their money.
These are great tips. We started with our daughter young. She has savings, stock, etc.