5 Fun Apps that Teach Children Wealth Management Principles

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There are numerous apps that teach children how to manage money and investment portfolios. Here are five best apps I found that I believe are worthwhile for your children to play.

Green$treets: Unleash the Loot!

Green$treets: Unleash the Loot! is a game based in the city of Green$treets. Kids rescue animals, feed and play with the animals they rescue, and then give them back to their owners. Children can earn money by growing gardens or by catapulting items they find into their very own tree house. There is a monster in the game who tries to stop them from what they are doing, but kids can escape him with proper planning and strategy. Kids can buy decor for their tree house or attire for their animals. This game teaches children how to earn and spend money, escape pitfalls in the search for more money, and treat other living creatures with care.

SavingSpree

SavingSpree shows kids, ages seven and up, how saving money every day or long term affects their ability to buy things they want or need, such as a new bike or college education. They have a certain amount of money and are able to save, spend, donate, or invest the money. It also shows them how work can earn them money and how there are certain things out of their realm of control that costs money. So, it teaches children that saving extra money just in case is a smart thing to do. They get rewarded for each smart choice they make. Their skills are developed through a game show that is run by a money-saving pig character. They are tested on their financial knowledge and rewarded with skills when they answer the questions correctly.

Kids Money

Kids Money is like a budgeting tracker, such like Mint is for adults. It helps kids keep track of the money they earn/are given and helps them to see when they will have the money to purchase things they want in real life. It allows for them to input numbers and receive information and graphics about their money. It’s fun and useful to teach older children how to save and use money and change wisely.

Motion Math: Cupcake!

Motion Math: Cupcake! is a game that allows children to own their own cupcake business and evaluate the costs and rewards of doing so. They get to create cupcakes individually and see how much each topping and ingredient costs to make the cupcake. They get to set a price for the cupcake and then either sell them out of the shop or deliver them around town. Children get to accumulate points/money by selling the cupcakes. It’s a great game to teach children that creating and selling products costs money up front but rewards them in the end. It is a great way to teach them about basic business principles, as well.

Renegade Buggies

Renegade Buggies give you a character with a shopping cart and you have to race around the streets of the town to collect as much money, gifts, and prizes as possible. Once you earn enough rewards, you make purchases at the grocery store and can purchase racing gear for your “buggy.” This is a great way to teach children that money can be fun to earn, but it is important to save in order to get the things they need to move forward.

These apps are user-friendly and provide an experience for your children to learn the basics of wealth management. They are fun and highly interactive. Some of the games are better for younger children, such as Green$treets: Unleash the Loot!, while other games are better for older children, such as Kids Money. Introduce your children to these games, and they will have a blast learning to be financially responsible!

6 Free Budgeting-Made-Easy Apps That Connect to Your Bank Accounts

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Each of these budgeting apps bring a unique strategy to the table and allow you to accomplish different financial goals with their help. Some allow you to pay for a premium/professional tier service for more features, but they are free otherwise. Here is my review of each of these six powerful budgeting apps from Apple or Android.

Mint
Mint allows users to create budget categories and keep track of their spending. It connects with your bank accounts if you let it and allows you to see where you are spending your money, as well. You can re-categorize the what you spent, too. It also provides free access to your credit score. Mint comes from the people who made TurboTax and Quicken, and it puts high priority on securing your information.

Level Money
Level Money creates a digital version of looking into your wallet. It helps organize your income and expenses so that you can see what is left over for you to spend each day, week, and month. It’ll send you consistent reminders about your spending habits and tell you how much you have left in each category. This app helps you to figure out how to reduce debt and save for larger expenses.

Mvelopes
Mvelopes is a digital version of budgeting your money in envelopes. You can pay bills from this app, see information about where you spend money and ratings, and get updates in real-time. It helps you to know which envelopes you use more often and how much you spend from each of them. It helps you to know how much money you have left before spending too much.

Personal Capital
Personal Capital is a budgeting tool, but it helps you plan for larger, significant life events, such as college and retirement. It allows you to see your net worth, work on your investment portfolio, and strategize for large, future expenses. You can come up with a retirement plan or even meet with someone in person to work on your investment strategy.

Penny
Penny has a comical kick to it. It sends you gregarious text messages with graphs and charts about your spending habits. Penny is a “she” who tells you about your income and expenses, informs you when a bill needs to be paid, and forecasts for next month. You can even cancel some of your services through this app. Penny puts fun back into finances so that it is not as stressful, while also providing powerful, organized, and simple information about your spending habits.

LearnVest
LearnVest allows you to categorize expenses and make goals for yourself. It gives you a financial planner, who can be accessed via email any day of the week, a financial plan, and blogs and classes about how to manage your finances better. It also has a calculator on it to determine your net worth.

Whether you choose Mint or LearnVest, Penny or Personal Capital, Mvelopes or Level Money, or some combination of the six, you are sure to be well on your way to a successful, organized, secure, and safe financial future.

Visa Launches Financial Literacy Initiative for Olympians – and More?

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My previous posts on this blog have focused on the importance of teaching children about money management from a very young age (three years old, to be exact – find out why here). Something I haven’t really touched on yet, though, is the fact that most adults, both here in the US and around the world, have never received a financial education like the one I’ve outlined, and are thus financially illiterate themselves. For proof, just look at the US subprime mortgage crisis, which likely would not have happened if more people had known how to manage their money responsibly, or how to determine if a potential investment had integrity before they signed their life savings away on the dotted line.

Erica Hill Keller Williams

Does a new Visa initiative represent the start of a global push to increase financial literacy? Only time will tell – but we can hope so.

The National Financial Educators Council (NFEC), an important organization that I’ve mentioned before on this website, has created a National Financial Literacy Test to find out just how financially illiterate each generation of Americans is in 2016. The test was originally designed for 15-18 year olds, but it has been administered to US residents of all ages, and quite frankly, the results are troubling, to say the least. This is mostly because the data shows no marked difference between the financial literacy of older Americans and that of our school-aged children, which shows that we are still not making enough of a concerted effort to teach our children about finance. We can see this quite clearly when we compare the average test scores of 10-14 year olds with the average scores of 25- 35 year olds, 36-50 year olds, and 50+ year olds. The average 10-14 year old scores a 54% on the NFEC Financial Literacy test; this is unsurprising, though disheartening, because this age demographic has yet to worry about their own personal finances the way they will when they get a few years older. Still, the average 25-35 year old only scores a 72% on the test, less than twenty percentage points higher than their younger counterparts – and the results aren’t much better in older Americans. Amongst 36-50 year olds, the average score is 73%, and in 50+ year olds, who perform the best on the test of any age group, the average score is still only a 77%. I’ll remind you again that this test was created for 15-18 year olds – scary, isn’t it?

This is why I was so excited to hear about Visa’s new Global Financial Education Initiative for Olympic athletes, which they’re debuting at this year’s Olympic Games in Rio. According to an August 4th press release, “The new program, Practical Money Skills for Athletes, will utilize Visa’s award-winning financial education program and curriculum focused on key personal finance topics including financial planning and decision making, goal-setting, budgeting and saving, understanding banking services, and basic money management. Financial education workshops for athletes will initially be available in English, French, Portuguese, and Simplified Chinese, and will feature presentations, skill-building activities and multi-media components.” What great news – and what a great idea for a program!

I can already think of so many different and valuable ways that an initiative like this one could be expanded on and adapted to teach people of all ages how to manage their money. I hope that this Visa program represents the start of a global push for financial literacy – but in the meantime, not to fear: I’ll still be here, posting about different ways that you can take your financial education (and that of your children) into your own hands.

Use This Organization’s Tools to Teach Your Children About Money

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In my last post, I spoke about the importance of early financial education. I recently learned of a terrific organization, the National Financial Educators Council (NFEC), that focuses entirely on this topic. Here’s their mission statement: “The National Financial Educators Council (NFEC) is creating a world where people are informed to make qualified financial decisions that improve their lives. We provide financial education resources, promote advocacy campaigns, and help organizations build sustainable financial education programs.” I have to tell you, just reading those words gives me hope for the financial future of our children – and here’s why.

Erica Hill

Teaching your children money management skills early on will make them fiscally responsible adults.

In focusing on creating a standardized financial curriculum, NFEC is addressing a real and dangerous problem in our country: the absence of anything even closely resembling a financial education in our schools. Quite frankly, it’s unacceptable that we are still prioritizing esoteric and unnecessary knowledge, like micro-details of the average Bronze Age Mesopotamian’s diet, over important, real-life knowledge, like how to avoid accruing debt, how to write a resume, and how to create and follow a budget.

People wonder how the Financial Crisis of 2008 could have happened. To me, it’s quite obvious that this stock market crash was a direct result of the fact that most Americans knew next-to-nothing about how to responsibly manage their finances, or why it would be a terrible idea to do things like take out four mortgages on one house. If we want to prevent another financial crisis caused by the same national Achilles’ heel from happening, it is imperative that we start teaching our children the skills they’ll need to become fiscally responsible adults as early as possible. Based on my fervency about this subject, you can imagine how pleased I was to learn that NFEC’s curriculum starts at the pre-school level, when the organization advises that children should be taught basic concepts of numbers, time, money and income, value, market and exchange, choice, and social values.

If you’d like to learn more about the NFEC’s advised curriculum or the opportunities they provide for guided financial education, head over to their website at financialeducatorscouncil.org. Your children will thank you for it one day. 

The Strong Case for Early Financial Education

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As any parent of a school-aged child can attest to, one topic that is conspicuously absent from most school curriculums is personal finance. Despite the fact that understanding one’s financial responsibilities is a basic life skill, for some reason, it is not only a topic that is rarely covered in the classroom, but it is one that is barely discussed at all until adulthood, by which time it is often too late to instill smart habits for money management without the added stress of having to apply these lessons in real time to real bills that are mounting by the day.

I am a strong proponent of the belief that we should start to educate our children about finances as early as possible, thereby demystifying the world of money management and imparting valuable advice that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. All too often, though, the process of getting the ball rolling on a financial education is so daunting that parents don’t know where to start. When we talk about a financial education and developing financial literacy, then, it helps to break the topic down into 4 areas of knowledge:

Erica Hill Real Estate

Teach financial literacy by turning money management into a game.

  1. How a person makes money
  2. How to manage the money you’ve made
  3. How to invest your money to turn it into even more money, and  
  4. How to donate your money.

Each of these topics opens a dialogue about much broader issues that children should be exposed to early on. For example, if you’re teaching your child how a person makes money, you can introduce her to the topic of work salaries and how her paychecks will be taxed before she receives them. When it comes to imparting wisdom about how to manage the money you’ve made, you can use this opportunity to teach your child about the importance of saving, how to financially plan ahead for her future and why and how to avoid the trap of falling into credit card debt. And while investing is often considered to be the purview of the rich, this is not only misguided, but also causes millions of people to lose out on potential income every year. We can correct this perception by teaching our children about investing in the form of a game, which will both demystify the process of investing and make it an appealing prospect to children from all socio-economic stratas. Finally, with financial education, we have the power to raise future generations who will view donating to charity not as a luxury, but as a mandatory component of money management, thereby creating a world in which charities and nonprofits have a much larger pool of funds to pull from to do good.

The fact of the matter is, only time will tell if these important lessons are incorporated into school curriculums. Until that day comes, it is our responsibility as parents to teach our children about finance in the home if we want to re-shape the way we as a society understand how to manage our money and put a stop to the financial ignorance that is causing so much of the world’s economic problems today.