These Tips For Teaching Kids Financial Responsibility are inspired by a recent TD Study on the State of Financial Education in Canada. Financial education shouldn’t start when kids are in high school. The earlier kids start learning about finances the better! Responsible money management and financial decision making skills are a life skill. TD offers tools and resources to help support financial literacy, including a Smart Money Toolkit for Parents. These 15 Tips For Teaching Kids Financial Responsibility might make your financial teaching easier…
Tips For Teaching Kids Financial Responsibility
- Who doesn’t love to play store? Pretend shop, checkout, hand over some play money (or swipe a piece of cardboard – er – I mean “credit card” of course!).
- Sorting money and number recognition is a great way to teach counting (and it’s early math skills!).
- Real life experience is a great tool for teaching financial literacy. “Who can spot how much apples cost?” and “Find the lowest price on paper towel” can be search games to keep kids busy. Also, let them see you go through the check out experience.
- Budget and debit cards are important for teens and tweens. So is opening their own bank account and learning about saving for the dream item. I’m a big supporter of the Need Vs Want philosophy (do you need tickets to go see the movie or do you want them?). This can be built into larger teachable moments with allowance or money earning jobs.
- Sales tax, loans, and methods of payment become is a learning lesson for teens. Sure, that sure costs $20 but what will the final price be when you add in sales tax? Do you have enough cash or do you need to use your debit card – or Mom’s credit card? Do you have a rewards card which will discount the final price? Do you need Mom to loan you the difference?
State of Financial Education in Canada
Parents and educators share the main responsibility for the financial education of children, but more work should be done to help teachers develop the skills they need to confidently teach it in schools across the country, according to a new report on the state of financial education in Canada. The report, commissioned by TD and prepared by the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education, says a key step to improving students’ financial literacy is to work toward a common approach and strategy that would apply wherever students learn in Canada.
Great tips. Children should learn about money and its value at an early age.
This is such an important lesson to learn. There are so many adults that don’t know the first thing about financial responsibility.
This is such an important lesson to teach the kids. Thank you for the tips.
This is great! I think we need to make sure our kids understand these financial lessons early !
I love the ideas. Now that my youngest is in kindergarten, I need to pull out the play money to have ‘stores’ to help with learning.
One of the things that worked well for my mother was opening a parent/child savings account. She even made me fill out the checkbook ledger for 25 cent deposits!
My daughter is at that age where I definitely need to start teaching my daughter these things!
We have friends who let their teens manage the family budget. Brave aren’t they? Yet I think they are doing the right thing in teaching them responsibility. These are great tips too!
I couldn’t agree with you more. My parents really didn’t prepare me for the real world, so I ended up in debt. It’s so important kids have a grasp on it.
Starting financial education early is so important! These are all amazing tips for teaching financial responsibility.
Teaching kids financial responsibility is so important. I started teaching my kids about it at a young age.
I did not talk to my kids a lot about money when they were younger. They are now 17 and 20 and we talk about it a lot more. I really should have started when they were younger.
These are great tips! Playing store is one of our favorite ways to role play with money at home!
My kids love to play store. I think it’s important that we, as parents, teach our children financial responsibility – starting from a young age. Great tips!
These are some awesome tips! I’m all for teaching kids about money and financial responsibility. I think it’s good to start young therefore there won’t be any scary surprises when they’re older.
Great tips! I think it’s really important to teach kids how to be responsible with their money. It’s a lesson they’ll never forget and be thankful for when they’re older.
These are important tips, it’s really important to teach kids how to be responsible with their money.