I’ve long wondered, why don’t we teach personal finance and economic health to our children in school? So often I’ve been asked by smart, educated adults to help them with their personal finance only to discover they didn’t have a grasp of the very basics of personal finance.
Our public high schools offer shop class, home ec. but not a class on the basics of managing your personal wealth? Seems like a failing. I was recently listening to one of my favorite finance podcasts Planet Money and lo and behold an episode on teaching personal finance to children. Specifically children’s picture books that teach finance to Children. They highlighted several children’s books to help teach economics to young children including Pancakes Pancakes by Eric Carle.
The Planet Money crew also introduced Mandy Robek a K-3rd grade teacher who uses a variety of children’s books to give her students an understanding of economics in an easy to understand and most importantly relatable way. Economics is so often presented in a dry theoretical way most people just shut off, but economics is all around us. It kind of reminds me of physics. Economics is basically just forces and flow and understanding how it works makes our journey through life so much easier.
Since finance will play such a large role in our children’s adult lives it seems vital to me that we give them the tools to manage their money and, as with most things, children’s books can help. Check out Ms. Robeks article for an extensive list of kid’s books to help you teach economic theory to your little one. It’s never too early to start learning about how money works. At least that’s my two cents worth.
