Teaching Money Management the Fun and Easy Way

Teaching money management to your own children is a very important responsibility. But it does not have to be all work and no play. Just remember that it is a marathon and not a sprint.

The first key to teaching money management is to tailor the lesson to each child. She will be much more interested if you can relate what she is learning to something that she likes to do. For instance, if your child plays soccer, frame the lesson based on the cost of soccer camp, for example. You could start out by saying, you have $20 in your Learn account. Soccer camp costs $120. How much more do you need in order to go? How long will it take you to earn enough money? What could you do to earn the money more quickly?

Other examples could include teaching them to create a balance sheet and a budget based on the movement of their own money. Show them how to figure out how many allowance periods it will take to save up for those Heelys.

The second key to teaching money management is variety. Mix it up a little. Working things out on paper is fine once in a while, but it can get boring pretty quickly. Money management word searches, money management crossword puzzles, and money management bingo are easy games to make up on your own.

How about a field trip to the bank to set up their separate accounts and maybe get to take a peek in the vault? Another idea is to pull out the financial section of the newspaper do mock trading.

That brings up the third key to teaching money management: keeping it light. No one likes to be forced into anything. They get enough of that in school. If your approach is one that naturally inspires their curiosity, they will be attracted to learn more.

You will find as you learn more about money management yourself, you will have to teach it less and less. Seeing you do it, they will want to do it themselves, especially if you set up the framework for them ahead of time.

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