How to Teach Your Kids About Money

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Health educators learned decades ago that intervention needs to take place earlier rather than later. Hence, anti-smoking programs begin as early as kindergarten.
Waiting until high school or middle school to begin the money conversation is not responsible. An innovative program, Kids Count on the Money Bus, was rolled out in Indiana in 2006. The program focuses on helping students in grades 3 thru 5 understand the basic concepts underlying financial education. These include differentiating between wants versus needs, delayed gratification and simple budgeting. Tied to state curriculum standards in math and social studies, the Money Bus interactive program also engages this generation in the manner they're used to -- instantaneous feedback on their responses via a technology-loaded curriculum.

Susan Miller of IN 1:17PM January 14, 2009

help me! i need to save 310$ for a new phone and i just keep spending it was is a idea that can help me save?

erin of AZ 8:53PM August 13, 2008

Great article. It is so important to involve your kids in the saving and investing process from an early age. This way when they grow up, they will be more financially savy and secure. I recently wrote about this ( http://www.savingtoinvest.com/2008/07/investing-lessons-for-young.html ) and it is importnant for the parents/adult to take the time and involve themselves in the learning process. These small lessons have a lifelong impact.

Andy of VA 3:44PM July 11, 2008

Teaching kids about money as soon as they can count and use different approached based on kids' ages.
I wrote more thoughts on my blog
http://www.parents-kidz.com

http://www.parents-kidz.com of CA 2:41AM July 07, 2008

I absolutely agree with you Kim, parents SHOULD be teaching their kids about finances. Sadly, it's what the parents are teaching that is frightening. My daughter is 12 and she has a friend whose parents are struggling financially my daughter knows this only because for months the friend has been telling her of the family's financial crisis. This was confirmed by mom and dad on a recent snow escape at our lake house. Once there, they opened up about their struggles and how they had refinanced so many times they were upside down on their loan, now owing more than the house is worh. Strangely, over the last few months my husband and I noticed their spending has increased dramatically, new vehicle (fully loaded), lift and new wheels for truck, new quads for the kids, motorcycle for dad, dunne buggy for mom, new swing set, and the most recent purchase of a large trampoilne even prompted my 12 yr. old daughter to say, "should they even be buying that in their financial situation." Unless they won the lottery, or just inherited a large sum of money and are keeping it a secret my guess is they're still living beyond their means and digging themselves into a bigger hole. In the end what you do and how your children see you handle your own finances will determine their attitudes on money not what you say. As for the government being responsible for our debt, PEOPLE WAKE UP ALREADY! Stop blaming others and take control of your financial future. Opportunities abound for anyone whose willing to stop making excuses and hold only themselves accountable for their position in life.

Bianca Echeveste of CA 3:47PM July 06, 2008

Check out www.itsahabit.com - inexpensive books and music my husband and I use with our kids. We listen to the music all the time on the way to school. My kids know several of the songs by memory and they have led to some fascinating money / saving conversations. More importantly, each has taken a greater interest in adding to their accounts regularly.

Olga Acosta of CA 11:37PM June 24, 2008

I'm very interested in teaching kids about money at a very early age. In fact, my web site runs a weekly feature where I solicit -- and publish -- blog posts about "Kids and Money."
It's so important to our society that we run the risk of becoming a third-world country if we don't get better at this. We've fallen far behind our peer countries in terms of savings and education (which also determines one side of a person's "personal profitability" (i.e., revenue)) and it will take decades (perhaps a generation or two) to catch up, IF and only IF we start NOW.

Bill of CA 2:15PM June 23, 2008

My parents taught by example in a myriad of ways. Case in point, if we wanted anything from the grocery store, it needed to be on sale and we needed a coupon. My parents almost never gave us money, so we had to stash away our birthday and holiday money. The only time mom ever gave money was if we mated the socks...there was a MASSIVE sock basket, and we got a nickel for every pair that was successfully mated. It wasn't much, but there was a penny candy store down the street, so we could go there whenever we wanted with our sock money.
My mother also demonstrates how NOT to run your financial life. While she's always paid the mortgage on time and she deplores car payments so she always buys used cars, her other bills can run so late she only pays when they threaten to turn the service off. Let's just say I have an allergy to consumer debt. I HATE when I can't pay the balance off on my credit cards. And when I do buy a house, I'm putting 20% down.

Veronica of NY 6:25PM June 12, 2008

I really appreciated the way my parents taught me how to save toward a goal: They told me one year (I was about 10 years old) that from then on, I would be responsible for coming up with the money to buy Christmas presents for family and friends. They didn't force me to save, but they explained that if I set aside $1 every week out of my $5 allowance, at the end of the year I would have $52. I was intrigued - $52 seemed like an unbelievably huge amount of money to me back then. Once I realized there was no catch - saving a little bit at a time really can add up to an unbelievably huge amount later - I was hooked. I've been saving ever since.
I'm glad that they made it a responsibility, rather than having me pick a frivolous goal of my own (although the first frivolous goal of my own was to save $100 just to say that I had $100 - I was a strange child). I'm glad that they didn't tell me what to do, but instead told me what I *could* do, and then let me do it. And I'm glad they picked a one-year time horizon, so that I could see my work pay off before too long, rather than having me save for something far in the future like college. I'm really not sure I would have learned the lesson as well any other way.

Johanna of MD 4:35PM June 12, 2008