Great resources for teaching kids about money:

Respect for parents, peace to family life, plus financial safety and freedom to our kids’ futures

• Leveraging
• Investing
• Interest
• Financial confidence
• Humility and charity
• Self-responsibility
• The choice of owning our own businesses
• And understanding pop culture’s control over our deepset and usually negative financial attitudes

Therefore, financial struggles, never-ending searches for better careers, adult dependent children, and falling for get-rich-quick schemes lie coiled up in the future, waiting to strike.

Wonderful ways to create a village for teaching kids about money

My favorite resource: Creative Wealth International, “Financial wisdom for life.” This program with its non-profit branch is the ultimate village for teaching kids about money for many parents and teachers, and I’ve now affiliated with them myself. Although the terms “wealth” and even “millionaire” are used in some of its programs, this resource teaches kids critical financial literacy in fun interactive ways such as setting up intelligent budgets along with the joy of doing good in the world and giving back.

You have several choices with Creative Wealth International. Kids can attend a money camp already set up in New York or California. For other locations, adults can bring a trained facilitator to their own area. You can even become a trained facilitator yourself and set up an ongoing financial literacy program for your community. Various ways are used for teaching kids about money, including money camp, and a highly effective role-playing money game, a challenging program called “Moving Out,” all in group activity settings.
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Do the nine-week youth Entrepreneur Course as a group activity

The fantastic and highly recommended Entrepreneur Course for teens was developed for homeschooled high schoolers, but public and private schooled kids and their parents can use it as well. Organize it as a summer camp or an after school money club.

Kids can either meet daily and work “individually while in a group” until complete, or meet weekly to discuss progress and ask questions about the progress they made on their own. Allow the group to help each other through the process. Materials are downloaded and accessed online via a password-protected site.

It’s a fun and thorough way of teaching kids about money as they develop their very own businesses and learn the missing 90% of why so many others fail in business. Bonus: Some kids who were failing in regular school became eager and successful students after this course opened their eyes to what their future could be, and gave real life meaning to school subjects such as math.
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Host weekly money game nights

Family or teen board game nights are already popular. There are a number of new and old stand-by money games you can use to turn an after school or game night into a way of teaching kids about money.

One of the more recent on the market is Cash Flow 101 (which we’ve tested on older teens through adults), and Cash Flow for Kids for younger people. These games teach how to get out of the rat race, the value of delayed gratification, the problem of buying instant gratification “doodads,” and the goodness of charity.

If the Cash Flow concept is new to you, you may want to start with Cash Flow for Kids even if players are in their older teens and adults. I know of grandparents who play the kids’ version with their grandkids and they themselves learn from it. It’s also less expensive. The regular 101 version may take some fundraising or donations to purchase as a group. (The links to games on this page open a new window to our Amazon affiliate.)

The regular 101 version is long and detailed. But if you turn it into an evening with a mid-game intermission, snacks, and camaraderie, older teen and young adult players usually end up with a very good feeling after each game is over, as though they’re discovering something about money that will empower them.

Other games for teaching kids about money: Monopoly has evolved. It now comes in versions for specific USA cities, as well as a World version with electronic banking, green energy and trips to cities around the world. Not as deep or complex as Cash Flow, but ages 8 to adult still learn to think ahead about money and delay gratification.

There are also some other stand-bys: Game of Life, PayDay, Moneywise Kids, and Easy Money.

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Set up your own group long-term savings goal:

A long-term group goal to save money for is a very effective method for parents, church youth groups or schools to use for teaching kids about money. While individual youth can do this on their own, it’s a great classroom or group activity. The energy of others keeping at it when you’re tempted to waste money on pop and chips is very powerful.

I have seen kids suddenly start saving money in unique ways such as asking for the equivalent of cash instead of Christmas gifts, then asking parents to literally hide their savings to they won’t be tempted to waste it away.

The money goal needs to be something they truly desire, and not something they feel they’re “entitled” to anyway (difficult in a world where pop media re-enforces that kids are entitled to it all without earning or giving anything back).

Avoid goals where “all the other kids’ parents are paying for it,” to start, and look for an individual group goal that doesn’t involve your groups’ social circle. Perhaps attending a summer horse camp together, attending a professional sports game for teen sports teams, going on an unusual field trip, or buying a large group tent to spend the summer trading yards for backyard camping.

If you do this for more than one goal, you may not have to be as concerned about false entitlement feelings down the road. Youth usually eventually love the empowerment that comes from earning their own way so much, they may eventually actually want to save for something other kids have given to them.
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See our article on youth group fundraisers and causes. as well.

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