By Katherine Handcock, A Mighty Girl Senior Research Intern

Welcome to the second part of our discussion about teaching money management skills to kids! If your child is a pre-teen or teenager, money is likely becoming an increasingly important aspect of their lives: the things they want cost more, they are able to start taking on age-appropriate work for pay, and independent adult spending is not many years away. In this article, we’ll present some resources for preparing your pre-teen or teenager for living a financially savvy adult life. For resources for younger children, check out part one in our series: Teaching Money Skills (Preschool and Elementary).

Practicing Money Skills

Board games and other money-related games can still help teach the complexity of money to pre-teen kids; you just need to make sure that the games you select include components other than simple money recognition. The Allowance Game, while suitable for a child as young as 5, still has plenty to teach to kids as old as 11 as well. The game features several ways to earn money, and lots of ways to spend it, but kids must keep in mind that the winner is the first person to collect $20. Choosing whether to buy or save, with a final goal in mind, is a great way for kids to practice money management in a risk-free way. 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