How To Teach Children About Money
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Kids always learn better when they think they’re playing a game – use this piggy bank game to teach them about saving, giving and looking after their money.
I think it’s really important to teach children about money and the value of being careful with it from a young age. I saw this idea posted recently on Humans Of New York and while the post only gave the most basic details I thought I would tweak it a bit and add some of my own ideas to make it work as a great piggy bank game for kids.
How To Teach Children About Money With This Piggy Bank Game
Children can use any money they like for this piggy bank game – money from doing chores, pocket money, birthday and Christmas money etc, although if they do have a very large amount parents may like to keep some of it safe for them or deposit it at the bank.
SAVINGS PIGGY BANK – This is to teach children about the importance of saving up for something themselves and not always being able to have what they want straight away. It may be good to set a goal of a certain amount so they have something to aim for or to use on something expensive that their usual weekly pocket money might not be able to buy, such as a new computer game. When they reach their target take them out to buy the item with their money and make a fuss about how well they have done to save for it on their own.
INVEST PIGGY BANK – Teaching children about investing may seem complicated but this should help to simplify things. Tell them for every £1 they add to the Invest Jar you will add 10p. Then write on the piggy bank the date it is allowed to be opened, six weeks, six months, whenever you choose and the money plus the ‘interest’ you have added is theirs to spend as they wish or redistribute between their other piggy banks.
DONATE PIGGY BANK – I think it’s important to teach children the importance of kindness, compassion and how lucky they are to have the things they do. Encourage them to occasionally put some of their pocket money into the donate piggy bank and help them chose a charity they would like to give to. You could also use the money to buy items to donate to a local food bank. Taking them to the supermarket and showing them how much food £2-£3 can buy should really help them value their own money and understand how to spend it wisely.
SPEND PIGGY BANK – The spend jar is for money they can spend now on small usual pocket money things like comics and sweets. It is sometimes good for rewards to be immediate, particularly if they’ve been well-behaved or have been doing something really positive during the week.
Why The Piggy Bank Game Works
Children learn so much better when they get to see and do things for themselves. Having these four piggy banks and getting them out each time they have money to add turns the process into a game. They may also wish to take the money out of the piggy banks each time too to count and see how they are doing and this is fine too – counting is, of course, another great skill to be practising at home. It can also encourage discussions about where to put their money – if one of their piggy banks has a lot less than the others it might the right time to add it.
It also encourages open and honest discussions about money at home – why we need to save, how we earn money and why we can’t just go out and buy whatever we want when we want.
What have you tried to teach children about money? How do you get them to engage with talking about finances? Have you tried this piggy bank game?
This is a great idea! I’ll definitely use this when my son is older. I’ll suggest it to my partner too for my stepson as I think it’s so important to learn the value of money from a young age but I’ve been struggling to think of a way to get him to think about saving – the ‘Invest Jar’ seems perfect!
Thank you, I’m so glad you found the post useful!
Hello I am currently teaching a group of primary school children and I am defatinly going to be using your ideas from this post in lesson to help teach them. Amazing post
Thank you, I’m so glad you found it helpful
I have three seperations for my daughters; spend, save , tithe. From their spend they can donate to whomever they choose. when the savings reach a certain point i take it and deposit it into their account. I don’t buy everything they want they have to learn to choose what they want based on their available spending money.
Absolutely. Sounds like you really have it down with teaching your kids about being responsible with money!
I love the idea of the “invest” jar. This is something that I wish I knew more about….my parents always focused on saving and earning, but not a lot on investing. I feel like that is one of the most important lessons you can learn nowadays!!
It absolutely is. For me it’s all about making your money work harder for you and investing is great way to do that.
I really like the physicality of this method. I actually did this when I first got out on my own as a young adult and it helped because the actual cash in the envelope was not abstract the way numbers in a check book can be. Great suggestion! I will start this with my little one!
Yes I love the envelope method too, we used it recently when were on Honeymoon. I’m so glad you found the post helpful.
I will most definitely share this with my daughter as my granddaughter is coming to that point when she is asking for money.
It’s definitely a good way get them thinking about money
What a fab idea. I am full of praise for Martin Lewis for driving financial literacy in schools, too.
I talk about the benefits of saving to the children for items they really want.
Great way of introducing them to the world of money
[…] has a complete post which fully explains how you to set up a save jar. It’s full of suggestions for conversations you can have and how to record saving and […]