Topic Challenge: Capital Allocation & Investment with Kids

Welcome back to the BIG Home Ed Conversations Podcast. In this episode, Kelly and Ashley share how they tackled a surprisingly big topic with their kids: capital allocation and investing — including spending vs saving, risk, impulse buying, and how money habits form early (for better or worse).

In this episode, we chat about:

• Why this topic matters (and why most of us weren’t taught it!)
• Helping kids understand spend / save / invest / give
• Kelly’s “family token currency” experiment (spend pot, save pot, investment pot + family pot)
• How risk works (and why investing can go up or down)
• Monopoly as a not-so-surprisingly good money-learning tool
• Bank accounts, budgeting, and setting realistic goals
• Impulse buying (and a family challenge to reduce it)
• Why values matter: experiences vs “stuff” (and how everyone prioritises differently)

Every week we will be picking a new topic from the hat that we wouldn't often choose to cover with our kids - we go away and give it a whirl, coming back to share what we did - bit like home ed topic speed dating!

Listen to find out next week's topic!

Resources mentioned:
Finance With Kids Podcast (Episode 24: Practicing Smart Spending Habits and Avoiding Impulse Buying)
FI for Kids podcast (Financial Independence for Kids)
Teachers Pay Teachers: “Personal Financial Literacy” (3rd grade math unit)
Usborne Lift-the-Flap Questions & Answers About Money
Know Nonsense Guide to Money: An Awesome Fun Guide to the World of Finance
Investing for Kids: From Piggy Banks to Portfolios
Why Money Matters (Deborah Meaden)
Monopoly - any version

Season 5’s paid sponsor is Strew — a home education logging app developed by a UK home educating mum and her brother. They’ve given us access to play around with the app over the next few weeks, and we’ll be reviewing it honestly as we go.

So far, we’re especially loving:
The feed (a scrollable timeline of what you’ve been up to)
Uploading photos and adding notes (so your memories don’t just sit in your camera roll with no context)
The ability to scan books (and other learning) into the app
The optional AI feature that can help categorise what you’ve logged (e.g., literacy, maths, etc.) and generate “study points”
If you want to try Strew, use code 'bighomeed' when you subscribe. - Head to https://strew.app/ to download it now on IOS and Android.

Follow + connect
Instagram + TikTok: @bighomeedpodcast

Website + weekly blog/resources: bighomeedpodcast.com

If you’re joining in with our weekly topic challenge, come and tell us what you did — we’d love to share your ideas with the community.