Escaping to the store without at least one child in tow is quite the task. As a parent, there have been many, many times when I have been at the store with one or more of my kids. The experience I wish to share with you changed me and the way I raised my children, which happened to be during the busy holiday season a few years ago. I was standing in line with my two-year-old at Walmart. She was so excited about all the toys, the lights, and the sounds, overstimulated and ripe for a meltdown. She was jumping up and down, asking for what felt like a million things. I keep telling her “no honey, not today”, and “we will put it on your list for Santa”, and finally, I lost it and told her the dreaded “it is not in the budget”. As I looked into her tear-stained face, I realized that she had no way of understanding a budget. How could she at two years old? I picked up her tiny body and took the time to calm her down, and tried my best to make her feel loved. It was then that I became determined to find a good way to teach children about financial responsibility.
How do you teach small children about bills, house payments, and all the things that I, as a parent, stress over? After doing some research, I found an article by National Numeracy that says: “If you want your children to feel confident managing their money, one of the best things you can do is to build their confidence with numbers. Feeling confident about the numbers will help them to make better decisions about how to save and spend their money. Numbers are a normal part of everyday life, and they don’t have to be scary. Learning to use numbers is a skill everyone can practice and learn, just like learning to dance or play a game. The more you practice, the more confident you get, and the easier it becomes.” (Click here for a free family math toolkit)
Helping kids feel confident with numbers can be challenging, but fun. Here are some simple ways to help them feel more confident. One idea I came up with was to play simple games to help them learn to identify and correlate numbers to their written counterpart. Most toddlers love to play matching games, and playing a simple one with numbers was easy. Help me Grow Utah has a wonderful developmental matching game with numbers attached here if you wish to use it. HMGU Puzzle Matching game with numbers
Another game that is both educational and fun is a Halloween game, but could easily be adapted to any time of the year. This game is called The Witches’ Spell.
If you have an ABC Mouse subscription, they have lots of math games for toddlers that are fun to play. However, the simple act of stacking blocks and counting them before knocking them over builds confidence with numbers. Counting cars on the road while running errands or even making cookies. There are so many ways to help your child build confidence with numbers in your everyday life.
I was also wondering if there was some kind of game we could play or activity we could do to help our older (age 4-8) children to understand that I am not being cruel when we can’t afford to buy every single toy or candy at the store. Like many parents, I find that budgeting is intimidating, but it doesn’t need to be. I thought about where to start teaching my kids about a budget and decided to start with the basics we need such as food, clothes, and housing. Even though my little children are too young to earn money, teaching them the basics will help them understand that everything costs money. I am a tactile learner; I need to do it to understand. Numbers on a spreadsheet are just numbers, but money, in my hands, I understand. I started with a little research to find out what the average cost of necessities is in 2024. Then I used that information to build an average household budget for a family of 6 living in Utah in 2024.
After the Walmart incident mentioned above and trying to find a way to teach our kids about money, I had an idea. It ended up being the way my husband and I taught our kids about money, and it worked out rather well. So I am sharing it with you as a tool to help you teach your kids. The idea was to use Monopoly money to show where the money comes from and goes to, hence a budget.
Here is how it worked. I have modified the dollar amounts to a modest family of 6 living in 2024.
I got out our Monopoly game, took out the money, and counted out $5,000.00 an average monthly Utah salary in 2024. This is after taxes and insurance come out. Then started to portion it out with the kids in mind. For our family of 6: two adults and four kids:
Sample Budget:
Monthly Charitable Contribution $250.00
Rent or House Payment: $ 2,500.00
Utilities (Electric, Gas, internet): $380.00
Streaming Services for TV: $75.00
Food: $800.00
Gas for the car: $170.00 Driving to work, errands, kids’ activities.
Car Payment: $450.00
Auto Insurance: $200.00 (two cars)
Cell Phone bill for Mom and Dad. $175.00
Total: $5000.00
This doesn’t include extracurricular activities and isn’t intended to be comprehensive. Keep categories simple and age-appropriate.
It was time to help the kids understand how to make and keep a budget so that we were all on the same page. I put all $5,000 of the play money on the floor (I used small bills $100.00, $50.00, and $20.00). I told the kids that it represented our family budget, the money on the floor is similar to the money mom and dad are paid for going to our jobs. Then I asked them if that looked like a lot of money, to which they all said yes. I asked them if they liked the home that we lived in. R who is 8, A who is 5, N who is 4, and C who is 2 all said yes. I told them that to keep our house, we have to pay for it. So I took $2500.00 out of the pile of money. Next, I asked if they liked things like lights, heat, and the internet for watching TV. They all said yes, those were good things. We agreed to take out the utilities payment of $380.00. Then Dad asked them if they liked to eat food. Everyone said yes very enthusiastically. So, we took $800.00 out of the middle. As the pile of money kept disappearing, the kids were looking worried. I then asked if they liked having a car, they worriedly said yes. We talked about how the van payment is $450.00 and that the law requires us to have insurance to drive the car, so that if there was an accident, the car would be fixed or replaced. That was $200.00. Then came the cell phone bill. $175.00 at the end was the $250.00 that was our monthly charitable donation. We looked down at the floor, and there was no money left. The kids asked if we could not donate the money to charity. I explained that the money we donate helps other kids whose parents don’t have jobs to have a house and car and heat and food. They looked sad that all the money was gone and I explained that right now there was no money for extras. We knew how they were feeling because we felt the same way. I saw the look as realization dawned on my oldest child’s face. He was starting to understand. I was not being mean to him; there truly was not enough money to go around. He then said we could save money if we ate less. I then told him we could save money by eating all our food and not wasting any. I wish I could tell you this lesson lasted forever but it did not. However, for a few months, the kids stopped asking for everything, and they even helped me save money at the grocery store by helping me to pick cheaper brands.
In conclusion, I know that no matter the age of the child, kids will always ask for items at the store. However, now when I say it’s not in the budget, there is more of an understanding that Mom is not being mean, but being conscious of our financial resources. I am grateful that I found a fun and relatively easy way to teach budgeting to my older kids. Helping my little kids learn to count and match their numbers will help them to be better with money as they get older. Teaching my children about budgeting and why it’s important was helpful to them and for my sanity.
Additional resource: How to teach kids about money
