Financial Friday: Kids & Money

Financial Friday: Kids & Money

by Alice Shaffer

I have been wanting to do a post on teaching kids about money. Some of the things that I want included are how to incorporate savings, spending & charity into the lesson on money.  As a professional nanny of teenagers they have a different outlook on money then younger kids do. I was reminded about my desire for doing this post because of meeting up with an old friend for dinner. She  has a teenager who will be going overseas later this year for three weeks. The parents told the child that they were providing the plane ticket, hotel/lodging and food money, but the child would have to save and earn the spending the money.   This teenager who is in 8th grade has less then $100 saved and will be leaving in about six weeks for Europe.   The teenager has been given opportunities to earn money and save it as well. The teenager has chosen to buy this item and that item instead of saving for Europe. The parents have reminded the child with each purchase of the upcoming trip and that there is no additional spending money available to them. So what will this teenager do when they are in Europe and see a wonderful item that they want? Will they think about that awesome CD they bought back in April they just had to have? It is a thing of the past and probably not even thought of anymore.  So how do you teach children about money and financial responsibility?

I ran across Brad Chaffee's blog Enemy of Debt  on this very subject: Financial Responsibility & Kids. Brad has a great blog post, Children and Money: A Basic Plan to teach Financial Responsibility,  that explains how he and his wife are teaching their 4 year old about the importance of money: saving, giving & spending.   They go on to show him that when he works he gets money, when he doesn't work he doesn't get money.   As Brad says: Just like in the real world.  Enemy of Debt has a Kid Finance 101 excel spreadsheet for his money plan for kids.  It is pretty cool!  I love the simplicity of it for a 4 year old and how it can be expanded for older aged children. Oh better yet, he references Dave Ramsey's Kids programs and the Dave Ramsey's books available for kids!

Be sure to jump on over to Enemy of Debt 

and read the full article on

Children & Money:  A Basic Plan to teach Financial Responsibility.

Then come back and tell us how your kids are learning about financial responsibility!