“How financially savvy and responsible are your children? How good is their Money IQ?
Do they understand ATM machines and credit cards don’t actually offer an unlimited supply of money?
Are the words debt, budget, interest, income, and savings like a foreign language to them?”
This is the introduction to an article I recently wrote that includes ideas to teach children financial responsibility. If you are interested in reading the article with more than 20 tips to boost your child’s money IQ, you can read the article here.
One of the tips I included in the article is creating a “bank” with your kids. My daughters and I had a lot of fun creating their little banks.
To create the banks, I hot glued four square bottomed containers (purchased from the Dollar Tree) together. Then, we labeled each of the jars: donate, invest, save, and spend.
My daughters decorated them with ribbons. They could have added stickers or other decorations, but they decided they didn’t want to.
I explained the bank concept further in the article entitled How to Quickly Boost Your Child’s Money IQ posted on A Fine Parent:
“My daughters and I enjoyed making their “banks” together. Each bank consisted of four square plastic containers with lids that I purchased and hot glued together. My daughters decorated the containers and labeled them: Donate, Spend, Save, and Invest.
We discussed what donate (give to others), spend (buy items), save (short term and long term), and invest (long term) meant, although they didn’t add anything to the invest container initially.
As my daughters received money, they divided the money into the separate containers. I had also created a sheet of paper similar to a checkbook ledger, which they updated (with my help at first) as they deposited or withdrew money from their containers.
This allowed them to easily see how much they had within each container, and it was great practice for balancing an actual checkbook. Every once in a while, we would take the money out of each container to count and make sure their total balance equaled what was written on the sheet.”
Do you have any other fun tips to teaching children financial responsibility?
For another fun craft to teach children about money, check out the following post.
Brigitte Brulz 