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Teaching Children The Value of Money

September 26, 2013

Note From MonsterMortgage.ca

Recently, the children of one of our mortgage agents came home from school excited to share what they had learned at school about money.

The student followed up with their teachers and found that an organization called Cent$ible Students which teaches financial literacy had been at the school.

MonsterMortgage.ca met with Cent$ible Students and they agreed to share their teachings with our clients and for those who follow our blog and follow us on Twitter and Facebook. We hope that you, your family and friends will find this information useful and help you engage your children on the topic of money.

Let Us Know What You Think!

The Following is written by Caroline, Co-Founder of Cent$ible Students

We teach our children the value of hard work, honesty, kindness and so much more. How can we teach them the value of a dollar?

Our children ask us to buy them things all the time. A new hockey stick. A doughnut. An iPod. It is important for them to understand their cost.

The value of these items will sink in if they are encouraged to purchase them with money they have earned. If we buy things for our kids all the time, they may be thankful, but they may not understand how hard we work to pay for it all. Once children use their own money they often become quite frugal!

One way is to help children learn the value of money is to equate an amount of work with the price of an item. Adults evaluate the worth of an item many times a day. $30 for that?!?! Am I willing to pay for dinner out or should we eat at home? Are these new boots worth the five hours I will have to work to pay for them?

We can help our children to understand the cost of items and the value of a dollar by getting them to do piece work jobs or those that pay by the hour.

If it takes them an hour to earn $5 by washing the car, they may think twice about buying that iPod app.

If kids have a lemonade stand and sell 20 cups of 50 cent lemonade to earn $10, that new hat may all of a sudden seem too expensive.

When they earn 5¢ for each weed they pull or $7 for each lawn they rake, the concept of the value of money starts to hit home. Your children will thank you for taking the time to do this when they are older. (Really!)

And, hey, we will thank them too. I will gladly pay almost any price to not have to weed my garden! 😉

Cent$ible Students provide in-class workshops for students from Kindergarten to Grade 8. We help students to develop an understanding of money related issues, including budgeting, credit, banking and saving through stories, activities, online tools and games. Our curriculum complements and reinforces the existing math curriculum requirements set by the Ministry of Education. It also helps teachers meet the new cross-curricular financial literacy requirements recently established by the Ministry for grades 4 to 12.

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