Games to Teach Your Kids About Money

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Knowing how to teach our kids about money in a fun and exciting way is really important to help them build a better future for themselves. So, I want to give you some tips about how you can help your children grasp the concept and value of money. There are so many great things you can do to help them, and really have some fun with it at the same time.

Below are a few categories I want to touch on, to give you some ideas. I would also love it if you’d share yours in the comments below!

Physical Board Games

One of the great things you can do is to replace your regular go-to on Game Night with a money-themed board game. You can have fun with it while educating your child, which is definitely a win/win!

Monopoly by Hasbro

It’s an obvious one, and I think pretty much everyone has Monopoly at home. There are so many different versions of the game, but the adult version can take a long time. As you know, kids don’t have huge attention spans and could get bored quite quickly with regular Monopoly.

Fortunately, there is a child’s version of the game, which I’ve played with my Goddaughter. It’s great fun and it’s so much quicker! When you land on a square, you can’t just bypass it — you have to buy the property. As they get older, they can move on to the adult version and have fun with being strategic in their purchases.

Payday by Hasbro

Here’s one I used to LOVE playing as a kid! Payday is a board game of the calendar month and the key is to “hold on to your hard-earned cash”. As you make your way round the board, if you land on a square, you have to spend your money/hand it over to the bank. You can also win money, and you can buy assets if you want to.

The winner is the person who has the most assets and money. It’s a great way to teach kids how to keep their money and not spend it all at once.

Act Your Wage by Dave Ramsey

I really like this one. If you know of and follow Dave Ramsey’s baby steps, you’ll be aware of his concept around getting out of debt. Steps like building a $1,000 emergency fund, and budgeting with the envelope system are also what you have to do in the game. The one who gets out of debt first is the winner.

Cashflow by Robert and Kim Kyosaki

Robert Kyosaki wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and he and his wife, Kim, created this game which essentially helps you to get out of the rat race. The game teaches you how to invest, so that you can build assets to pay your wages and then leave your normal 9-5 job.

It’s a great way of teaching kids about investing, and from a personal point of view, it’s great for adults, too! The paid version is available to purchase online. There is also a free version called Cashflow Classic, which you can get access to in exchange for your email.

Apps

When I looked into this, I found it quite difficult to find helpful apps specific to the UK market. There is one called Pigby’s Fayre, which has been created by NatWest. It’s all about how you buy and sell in fayre environment.

Your child gets to create their own stall — an ice-cream stall, for example. They would create different flavours of ice cream and then sell them on. It covers the basic principle of buying, selling, stock and running a business. It’s a great little game to play on an app and passes some time.

Art/Craft Projects and Other Fun Money Learning Ideas

Using your imagination to come up with ways to teach your kids about money is perfect. It’s something you can do at home using what you’ve already got, and the sky’s the limit! I’ve found some really great ideas to help your kids understand and learn how to manage money. These are the kinds of things I want to hear about in the comments.

Here are some great concepts I’ve come across to help get your creative juices flowing:

Using coins to pay for snacks

I saw this in Lockdown 1.0 on Facebook, and thought it was brilliant. One mum was tired of her kids always asking if they could have a snack, so she created a tuckshop for them. They could buy however many snacks they wanted for a maximum of £1 a day. For example, a biscuit was 30p, or they could purchase an apple for 5p.

She was steering her children towards healthy eating as they could buy more by choosing fruit rather than expensive chocolate and biscuits. As long as they were honest and put the right amount of money in the box, the game worked and there was an added element of trust as well.

Money Bingo

This is one we already play in our Facebook community – the penny challenge. It’s a similar concept; you just create a bingo board with different money values like 5p, £1, 50p, 10p. Whenever your child comes across that money (such as found in the street, or given as a gift by an aunt or uncle, for example), they can cross the money off the bingo chart and it goes in their money pot.

They’re essentially building up their savings, so they might want to use this bingo card as a way to save for a game, or something else they want to buy.

Money Jars

The concept here is to split the money they get into three ways: Some for spending now, some for saving, some for giving to charity. This not only teaches them delayed gratification, but also that they’re more fortunate than other children and can give to others and help them.

The Entrepreneur Challenge

Now this one I love! In the entrepreneur challenge, you give your child £10 then challenge them to make more money with that £10. One thing you could do here if you’re into investing, is invest that £10 for your child onto your online platform and watch it grow together.

Or, get them to physically do something with that money. For example, they could buy some seeds, plant them into some cheap plant pots with some soil, then when they produce flowers, sell them on for a profit.

They could also do it with sweets, by bundling them into some new packaging, make them look pretty, and sell them on. Or, they might buy some candles from a pound shop — buy some nice candles, decorate and make them look pretty, repackage and sell them on.

These ideas are obviously not ground-breaking activity. But it’s giving them a sense of achievement and creativity, and a real taste of entrepreneurship from growing their initial £10.

I used to take all of my old stickers from my old sticker albums — so all the duplicates and ones I didn’t need — and created bookmarks to then sell on.

Generate More Ideas

If none of these ideas work or aren’t a great fit for your child, do a Google search to generate some ideas. Or, take a look at the website called topmarks.co.uk – it’s all about educating kids about the maths behind money.

Tell us in the comments about the games you play with your children, or the other small people in your life about how to manage money. And don’t forget to come into our Facebook group and share it with us as well!