How do you teach children about earning, spending and financial choices?

[AlwaysBusy77]

Full disclosure before I ask: I’m the founder of a small UK website called My First Payslip.
I created it because children can sometimes feel as though money simply appears and that they should be able to have everything they want. I wanted to find a practical and enjoyable way of teaching them that money involves choices, effort and trade-offs.
Parents can set children age-appropriate tasks, which are turned into simulated payslips. It also includes money quizzes and short lessons designed to help children make better financial choices.
The idea is to help children understand that:

• Money has to be earned.
• We cannot always have everything we want.
• Spending money on one thing may mean giving up something else.
• Working, learning and making an effort can help us achieve our goals.
• Sometimes we need to wait and save for something we really want.

I’m not posting a link or asking anybody to subscribe. I would genuinely like to understand how other parents teach these lessons. Do you give your children fixed pocket money, pay for particular tasks, or use a mixture of both? How do you explain that they cannot have everything they ask for? Would tasks, simulated payslips, quizzes and short money lessons make these ideas more engaging—or does it sound unnecessarily complicated? Honest and even blunt opinions are very welcome!

What age are you aiming at?

The best financial lessons have been mine getting PT jobs at 16.

We have a lot of open conversations about money - they know how much we earn,how much our bills are, how we divide up our income. They know we work to a really tight food budget, but are also aware this is to facilitate the cost of a holiday and new kitchen. We constantly verbally model the thinking process of spending and the pros/cons of different options.

We set them all up with Monzo accounts and discussed how they spent their money, and how to budget in advance with the Monzo pots. This has worked really well for them.

It's worked so far. My older two are v good at budgeting for the immediate whilst also saving for long-term goals. My youngest is 14 and likes to spend like there is no tomorrow, but is building her financial literacy through all our conversations. We give her an allowance and often offer her the opportunity to earn more for extra hobs, but she can only access these opportunities if her room is respectable.

I don't think fake payslips and games would gave worked for mine. The best education is real life.

Thank you for your message. It sounds like you have managed to educate your kids so well done for that. My app is for children from 5 to 17yrs with lessons(quiz's) suitable for the various ages.

I let them decide how to spend regular money from grandparents & earn more from us if they want to. It's worked well.

The best way to learn is practical. They have pocket money and can spend it on what they want but aren’t given more. So they learn that if they spend it all at once they have no more for the rest of the week. Also doing chores round the house for money so they are earning. DS was never so protective of anything as the leather jacket he worked three weeks to earn the money for when he was 15. The trouble is today that parents have Amazon accounts and children know they just need to ask and/ or click. No saving up for an album because families have Spotify or Apple Music.