Financial Literacy
As the holiday shopping season takes flight, now might be a good time to start talking financial literacy with your kids. Get a hold of the gimmies in the midst of the annual shopping bonanza:
Go online:
Let them try running a business – virtually: try Lemonade Stand
http://www.coolmath-games.com/lemonade/index.html
and it’s companion, Coffee Shop
http://www.coolmath-games.com/lemonade/index.html
http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-coffee-shop/index.html
The Mint – Activities, games, challenges, quizzes and tests to help kids be money smart (and to help you get them there)
http://www.themint.org/
http://www.moneyinstructor.com/kids.asp
Teach kids about money – how it’s made, how to save it, grow it, earn it.
Reading for us:
Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Financially Responsible Children – Did you know 180,000 young adults between 18 and 24 declared bankruptcy last year? Me neither. Teaching the difference between “want” and “need” can’t start too soon.
Kids and Money: Giving Them the Savvy to Succeed Financially – The author has been a writer for Forbes magazine, appendix includes online resources to help
The No-Cash Allowance: A Practical Guide for Teaching Your Children How To Manage Money – Develop money-management skills for your kids to make them financially-independent adults. Winner of the 2005 Mom’s Choice Award.
Reading for them:
The Everything Kids’ Money Book – The Everything Kids series brings you a tome to teach your kids how money is made, what it can buy, how saving and investing works – all in terms they can digest. Includes information about opening a bank account, banking online, saving allownaces and more.
Money Sense for Kids – Divided into three parts, kids will learn everything about money – from how it’s made, to how it moves. Money Games includes activities to be shared with an adult.
Economics, the fun way:
Whatever Happened to Penny Candy? (http://astore.amazon.com/wwwpracticalb-20/detail/0942617525) Using historical events, this book explains investment cycles, recessions, inflation, demand for money and more.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/publications/result.cfm?comics=1
Also: the Fed will send you a series of free comic books explaining currency and monetary systems in handy comic form. And I’ll say it again: they’re FREE. Some of the stories are slightly fictionalized, but the principles are straightforward.
Go see the dough:
http://www.moneyfactory.gov/locations/index.cfm/3
Take the kids on a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. After a brief introductory video explaining how paper goes from printing to monetization, you’ll take a walk through the catwalks of the facility. The “ask for free samples” joke never gets old.
This article originally appeared in Helping to Homeschool, my column at communities.washingtontimes.com
