Money Managers: How to Teach Your Children About Money

Learning about money is one of those "It’s never too early" moments when it comes to your kids. In fact, it’s better to teach them about money, how to manage it and budgeting early so it’s ingrained by the time they’re adults. This way they’ll make responsible financial decisions down the road.

• Provide an Allowance: When it comes to money, sometimes kids really do think it grows on trees. By providing an allowance and letting them pay for things, they really start to learn what the true value of a dollar is. It doesn’t really matter how much the allowance is but it should be enough for them to be able to save it over time and buy something substantial.

• Saving Money: A piggy bank is an excellent way to teach young children about the value of saving money. They will learn that when you save money, you can get something you really want or save it for something you really need rather than spending it all at once.

• Developing a Budget: When teaching your kids about budgeting, make sure you include both long term and short term goals (e.g. money for video games, money for investing and saving, money for clothes etc.).

• Keep a Check: Just like how adults have a checkbook to keep track of money going out, you can also create a ledger for your kids so they too can learn about balancing money they have versus money they spend. It's a great way to teach the value of a dollar, teach them responsibility and let them see just how they spend their own money every month. These ledgers can be made by hand or printed out online. Every single time they buy something new as well as put more money into their piggy the information can be added to it.