A Mighty Girl's top picks of books and toys for teaching kids about money management.

Financial literacy is an essential skill for every child to learn! Money is an integral part of modern life, and whether your child is a preschooler counting coins, an elementary school child saving for a new toy, a tween learning about investing, or a teen budgeting for school expenses or their first full-time job, there are plenty of opportunities to teach kids how to earn, save, spend, donate, and invest. And yet a recent study from the Girl Scouts found that only 12% of girls aged 8 to 17 feel very confident making financial decisions, proof that we need to do more to improve kids' financial literacy.

In this blog post, we've showcased our favorite resources to help kids (and maybe parents too!) learn more about money and how to manage it. From play money that helps young kids learning to identify coins and bills, to books that introduce concepts like debt, entrepreneurship, and investing to older kids, and even a few titles to guide parents in money conversations, these resources will help you give your Mighty Girl the confidence to manage her money successfully — and use it to plan for her future. Continue reading → Continue reading

By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Senior Research Intern

Welcome to the first of two articles about resources to help parents teach their Mighty Girls money management skills! Every parent wants their children to learn how to manage money effectively, but many families aren't sure how to go about discussing finances -- especially since few of us grew up in homes where money, spending, saving, and debt were discussed in any detail. However, with a few good resources and a little time, even very young children can start learning about how money works. In our follow-up post, we provide resources for teaching money management skills to older children and teens.

How Money Works

One early step in learning about money is learning how to recognize different denominations of paper money and coins. A toy like Melissa and Doug's Play Money set, which comes with dozens of pretend bills from $1 to $100 as well as play coins in all US denominations, allows kids to role play the whole process of a purchase: selecting an item, learning a price, recognizing and totaling bills and coins, and making change.

At the same time, parents can read books to their kids that involve money being invested, saved, and spent. One good book is Lemonade in Winter by Emily Jenkins, in which Pauline and her younger brother John-John start their first business -- a lemonade stand. The book covers addition, subtraction, sorting, and money recognition, but also more complicated concepts such as investment and return, selling techniques, and entrepreneurship. Continue reading → Continue reading