How to Teach Kids About Money: 5 Fun Strategies for Home Education

Our Top 5 Strategies for Covering Money Management With Your Kids

If when we plucked the topic “capital allocation and investment” it made you laugh/cry a little… same.

In this week’s BIG Home Ed Conversations experiment, we set ourselves the challenge of exploring money management with our kids (including saving, spending, investing, and the emotional side of all of it). And honestly? Once we got started, it was way less scary than it sounded.

Below are our top 5 strategies from the episode, plus an easy list of every resource we mentioned so you don’t have to scribble notes while you listen.

Our top 5 strategies

1. Make money visible with “pots” (and make it playful)

One of the quickest ways to make money concepts click is to give kids a simple system they can see.

We used the classic “pots” idea (spend, save, invest/grow, give) but made it fun with a family token currency.

What we tried:

We created our own “weekend currency” using Lego blocks as tokens.

We set up different pots:
Spend pot
Save pot (with a small “bonus” reward for leaving money alone)
Investment pot (with a dice roll so it could grow, stay the same, or shrink)
Family pot (a contribution pot for shared goals)

Why it worked:

Because it wasn’t a lecture. It was a game. And suddenly the kids were doing maths, planning, negotiating, and thinking ahead without even realising they were learning!

2. Link earning to effort (but keep it short-term and realistic)

Kids don’t need a full economics module to understand this:

Effort in → money out → choices.

We tied tokens to actions like:
Doing a worksheet
Reading chapters
Helping around the house (dishwasher, moving washing over, etc.)

And the motivation was immediate. The “money management” part became real because they could earn, allocate, and spend in real time.

Important note from us:

This isn’t meant to become your whole life. It was a short experiment that made the point fast. Tying educational work or housework to financial gain is a whole other pocket money argument for another time. The point here is to demonstrate how working in a real job one day actually works - responsibility and effort gains you financial stability and choices. 

3: Use real-life tools to show how adults actually budget and save

Once kids have the basic idea, showing them a real app or real budget can make it feel less abstract.

What we tried:

Sitting down with a savings app (Plum) to show savings pots, automated saving (money moving without you having to think about it), and how priorities shift when something big comes up (like replacing a washing machine).

Looking at investment charts and asking:
What do you notice?
What happened here?
If we bought at this point and it’s worth this now, what does that mean if...?

Why it worked:

Because it connected “grown-up money stuff” to patterns kids already understand (graphs, change over time, cause and effect). This also helps a little with spreading the 'mental load'. Teaching our kids about your personal financial situation (age appropriately) - helps them to understand that to have things - you save for them, or you work to earn more money. It can be hard to fully grasp this concept in the heat of the moment at the blasted souvineer shop at the zoo! 

4: Teach patience and planning (especially around impulse buying)

One of the biggest money skills isn’t maths — it’s emotional regulation.

We talked a lot about impulse buying and how to slow it down without constant battles.

What we tried:

A simple phrase that works brilliantly in the moment:
“If it’s important to you, we can make a plan to get it.”
Take a photo, go home, decide later.

A family challenge:
No impulse purchases for the rest of the month.
If we didn’t go to the shop intending to buy it, we pause and plan.

Why it worked:

Because it respects the child’s want without automatically saying yes, and it creates space for better decisions.

5: Use stories, books, and games to keep it age-appropriate

Money can feel heavy. Books and games help kids explore the ideas without it turning into a scary grown-up talk.

What we tried:

Monopoly (yes it’s long, but it’s brilliant for addition, exchanging money, strategy, risk, and “bigger picture” thinking).

Books that break down money and investing in bite-sized ways. (Full list below!)

Podcasts aimed at kids (and podcasts aimed at parents).

Why it worked:

Because it gave us multiple entry points. If one approach felt boring, we could switch it up - keeping it flexible, meeting your kids where they are and learning together in ways they enjoy is more important than anything else!

Easy resources list

Apps

Plum app (used to show savings pots, budgeting, and investments)

Money Time Kids (We will be trying this course and reviewing it properly in a later episode!)

Games

Monopoly 
Monopoly Deal (faster Monopoly-style card game)

Podcasts

Finance with Kids podcast (father/daughter duo)
Episode mentioned: “Practicing smart spending habits and avoiding impulse buying” (episode number referenced as 24)

FI for Kids (FI = Financial Independence)

Websites

Teachers Pay Teachers
Resource mentioned: “Personal Financial Literacy” (third grade math unit)

Books

Why Money Matters By Deborah Meaden 
Usborne Lift-the-Flap Questions and Answers about Money
“Know Nonsense” guide to money (spelled K-N-O-W; described as “an awesome fun guide to the world of finance”)
Investing for Kids (Instagram-recommended; colourful with diagrams and history)
Investing for Kids: From Piggy Banks to Portfolios (black and white; younger tone; includes history and fun facts)

Bank accounts for kids

(setting them up so money is visible and safer than cash)

A gentle reminder

Your kids don’t need to love this topic straight away.

Sometimes the win is simply:
They start noticing choices.
They feel the difference between “quick win” spending and “big goal” saving.
They get to make small mistakes now (with pocket money) instead of big mistakes later (with credit).

If you try any of these ideas at home or come up with even better ones, come tell us what worked (and what flopped). We genuinely want to hear your real-life experiments.

Kelly & Ashley