When it comes to saving and spending money, it’s never too early to start teaching your little ones the basics. If you’re not sure exactly what the money lessons ought to look like for preschoolers and kindergarteners, here are 3 tasks to help educate them.
1. Show Them What You Value
You’ve been a role model to your children since the time you started pushing them in the double stroller for infant and toddler with car seat. No pressure, right?!
But seriously, you can use this influence to show your youngster what to value as they have grown up. From what you make for dinner to how you and your spouse talk about financial matters, they’re taking in everything they see and hear.
One way to show them the value of money is to give consistently to charity and involve them in the action. Tell them when you donate to an organization and explain how far the dollar bills go toward helping others.
2. Start to Use Monetary Terms
Begin to casually use finance talk in your conversations around the house, both with your partners and children in kindergarten. We’re not talking about big words like investing but instead:
- Giving
- Charity
- Saving
- Spending
As they get older, you’ll want to introduce talk about income. And budgeting too.
By starting to use financial speak with your kids while they’re still quite young, you’re able to instill behaviors before these habits become ingrained by age 7.
Basically, as soon as your youngster is of the age where they can have money then is the time to start educating them about it. Teaching values is a key part of parenting and you can really make a positive difference.
3. What Does Money Buy, Anyway?
The third money lesson to teach your kids is what cash can buy at a store, restaurant, or elsewhere. Doing so puts concrete worth to toys and other material things they will begin to see in commercials on TV and when you’re out together grocery shopping.
So, the next time that you are food shopping, show them a few items and say the monetary amount of it. And when you’re at the cashier, they’ll see you do credit card transactions, view the physical receipt, and watch you being polite when paying for items.
A lot of lessons are learnable from this one trip to the supermarket! It’s likely more valuable than a lecture at home would be as you’re demonstrating actions here rather than simply saying words to your kids out of context.
Then, when you get back home, take out some coins from your purse and start to explain the names of each one. Any easy way for them to tell the difference between coins at this young age is by color.
Finances at a Young Age
A bonus about teaching money lessons to your kids is that you’ll spend quality time together. By having conversations and interactions about money regularly, you are showing them that money is important, deserves respectful thought, and how to use (and save) it wisely.
The habits that you’ll pass onto your daughter or son are ones that will stay with them for the rest of their life. The insights they learn through your time together can help them build confidence when it comes to money and see them through any difficult financial times later.
Feel good about how you’re preparing them for the future. And enjoy the valuable time together too!
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Related:
How Well Do Your Kids Understand Finances?
Helping Kids Get Organized