Teaching Children About Money – Guest Post
Today's post is written by Katie. Katie is a HUGE help to the crusade! She coordinates all financial counseling appointments, manages my schedule, and helps ensure that the crusade to help others accomplish far more than they ever thought possible with their personal finances rolls along smoothly.
Anyway, she and her husband (Matt) are the proud parents of two beautiful children – Cameron (4) and Claire (<1). Today, Katie shares how she and Matt are training Cameron about money.
Since our son is only four years old, we are teaching him that there is value to everything and that we use money to buy the things that we need. Because money is limited we teach him not to be wasteful. One of his favorite things to do is to pour milk down the sink (who knows why). I have started explaining to him that we paid money for that milk so we need to save what we do not drink because it is worth something. When we go shopping I am constantly talking to him about how we have to pay the store money before we leave because those items are worth something and we have to exchange our money for them. When he asks for a treat or something at the store I have to tell him that we only have x amount of money and that costs more than what we have to spend since we are buying other items to eat for meals.
Sangl says … It is never too early to start teaching children about money. Jenn and I started teaching our daughter about money when she was four years old too.
By the way, Matt and Katie's son is super-smart. He has learned the books of the Bible and can say them without help – backwards. Watch it HERE.
Here’s one way we’ve started teaching our kids about money and budgeting.
Back story – During the summer months we take our kids to different activities but only spend $2 per week per kid. The first week I took them to free movies at the local theatre and then bought them popcorn and drink for $1 each. My 5yr old wanted to play a game that cost $1 to which I replied we spent your allotted $2 this week already. His reply was he would not have spent his money on popcorn but would have wanted a game instead.
SO what I did was create a page of photos of activities and how much they cost. Under the free was a picture of the library story time, movies, park, pool, etc. Under $1 items I had more pictures and Under $2 I had other pictures. I went online and printed off $1 bills for each kid. At the beginning of the week I give them their 2 $1 bills and they give them back to me when they want to spend them.
Now my kids have gotten creative. They discovered that if they read 10 books the library gives them a coupon for a local restaurant so they can have a free activity. It’s amazing b/c my children (3 and 5) are coming up their own way of spending more and how to NOT spend money. They are now looking at the groceries and will point out which product looks the same but cost less. That’s just my 2 cents worth. 🙂