How to Teach Kids About Money, Age by Age

By Jonathan Bach, author and illustrator of Clarence Gets a Bargain

Money habits set by age seven. That’s the finding researchers keep landing on, and it means the window opens earlier than most of us want to admit.

Here’s the good news: teaching a kid about money doesn’t take a curriculum. It takes a grocery store, a stack of sale ads, and a parent willing to let the kid hand over the coupon. Everything below fits inside errands you were running anyway.

Make money physical

• Pay cash sometimes, and let them do the paying. A card is magic; a five-dollar bill is arithmetic. A kid who watches three dollars leave their hand understands something no tap-to-pay will ever teach.
• Count coins into a clear jar. Watching it fill beats any app with a progress bar.
• Start the sorting game. Things we need, things we want. Dinner: need. Robot: want. They will argue the robot is a need. Good — that argument IS the lesson starting.

Put them on payroll

This is Clarence’s age, and it’s not an accident. In the book, the robot isn’t a gift — it’s a reward he earned with a year of chores and good grades. The prize has a price tag, and he knows it before he ever sees the store.

• Tie a small allowance to real work. Income has your name on it because you did something to earn it.
• Split it three ways: spend, save, give. Clarence’s family picks their charities together before the end of the year. Steal that. Giving planned before the fun stuff lands differently than giving from leftovers.
• Open the sale ads at the kitchen counter. In the book, Mom calls it “shopping homework” — and it’s the kind with a payout. Which store has the better price on the thing your kid wants? Have them find it. Circle it with a marker like it’s 1995.

Promote them to staff

Stop bringing kids to the store as cargo. Bring them as staff.

• Assign one comparison job per trip. Same cereal, three brands: which costs less per ounce? That’s comparison shopping, and it’s the kind of homework that puts money back in your pocket.
• Walk the clearance section on purpose. Show them the bright stickers. Explain why stores mark things down: a newer model is coming and shelf space costs money. Marked down doesn’t mean broken; it means the timing is on your side.
• Hand the kid the coupon and let them give it to the cashier themselves. In the book, one 10%-off coupon turns a clearance robot into an even better deal — and it’s Clarence, not Mom, who remembers it folded up in his pocket.
• Point at the sales tax line on the receipt. The sticker price is never quite the price you pay. One receipt explains it better than a chapter ever could.
• Play the games from the book. Grocery challenge: whoever spots the biggest savings wins; loser carries the bags in from the car. After dinner: “Guess the Price” — somebody got a deal today, everyone guesses what it cost. Clarence always guesses last and lowest. He figures if it’s worth bragging about at dinner, it had to be really low.

Move them online

• Same skills, new store. Price-compare across three sites before any purchase. Check whether that “sale” price was the regular price two weeks ago; price-history tools make fake markdowns easy to catch.
• Teach the big three: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Prime Day. Gold mines if you did your homework first; traps if you didn’t. Know what you want and what it usually costs before the clock starts.
• Let them run one full purchase solo — their savings, their research, their checkout, sales tax included. Mistakes at eleven cost $14. The same mistake at twenty-seven has a credit card attached.

What not to do

• Don’t lecture. One store trip beats ten speeches. Kids learn money by handling it, losing a little of it, and carrying the grocery bags when they lose the savings game.
• Don’t hand them a worksheet. If a money lesson looks like school, it gets filed under school. Hide it in a story, a game, or an errand and it sticks.
• Don’t wait for the school to cover it. Most state financial literacy requirements kick in at high school — roughly a decade after the habits form. See where your state stands.