Teaching children about money
I want to teach my children about money and finances at an early age, so a post at Dumb Little Man about some comic books to teach kids about money piqued my interest.
I ordered them for free from the Federal Reserve, and they showed up a few weeks later. I read through them and was not all that impressed, although for the price, I shouldn’t have expected too much. They’re pretty dry, and don’t have anything earth shattering, but I think I’ll still read them to my children when they get a little older.
There is no lack of resources on the web. It seems everyone out there has an opinion on teaching your children about money.
We are very interested in hearing more about your efforts to bring financial literacy to children, and help them be aware and secure their futures.
We are OINK! the Business Newspaper for Kids, primarily aimed at 7 to 12 year olds. OINK! is pink, like the Financial Times, full of money matters for kids and is distributed FREE each month upon request to schools, libraries, children’s hospitals and sports clubs across the United Kingdom.
Over the past four years we have built a steady reputation of bringing information about money and commerce to kids in a fun, creative and highly stylised way. The newspaper’s content is cutting edge, ground breaking and often thought provoking, and has won recognition from the National Literacy Trust and the Schools Library Association as an important literacy and learning tool.
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We produce a weekly radio show, OINK! ON AIR, which is broadcast each Sunday on Capital Disney Radio – the UK’s favourite children’s digital radio station.
We have recently introduced the Piggybank® Fantasy Stock Exchange™ which provides kids with a fantastic opportunity to learn all about stocks and shares and play the stock market absolutely free.
Below please find a link to our websites.
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As in so many things, kids learn a lot by example – especially the actions of their parents, so I’ll bet your kids are learning quite a bit from watching you and your wife.
My wife and I are pretty open about the household finances with our kids. For instance, at the store when one of our children begs to have some new toy we flatly stated that it’s too much money and we can’t afford it. Most kids handle this frank response quite well. But I sure see a lot of parents who are reluctant to say “no” when their kids want them to buy something. It’s like it’s an embarrassing admission of guilt that the parent doesn’t have unlimited funds to buy their kids everything they want. And so the parent makes excuses or caves in and buys the trinket. As has been shown in many studies, even though it is somewhat counterintuitive, kids are happier when they have boundaries and limitations and money matters are no different. Our kids now look at the price tags and even say things like “that’s too expensive”. We still splurge on occasion and buy fun stuff for our kids (life isn’t enjoyable if it’s only constant denial), but they seem to grasp the idea of balance in spending. And they save and value their money more.
Very true. No matter what we tell our kids about finances, actions will be far more powerful. That’s a good idea to be frank about not being able to afford something. I’ll have to try that out when the situation presents itself.