This post is sponsored by T. Rowe Price.
“I just don’t understand why my friends want to spend real money on things for Fortnite®”, my 12-year-old son pondered one night after the latest Battle Pass came out. Thomas likes playing Fortnite with his friends, watching YouTube® videos featuring game play, and stays up to date with game news to converse with friends at the school lunch table. His Fortnight knowledge allows him to instantly connect to other kids at school around a shared interest, but it’s also provided us with a lot of opportunities to discuss money.
While some parents have expressed their wishes that their kids understand what mine does about spending real money in a virtual world for non-tangible things, I can’t say that there was one specific thing we did to facilitate Thomas’ comprehension. Maybe it’s because I’m not a fan of in-app and in-game purchases (and make it known to my kids!) or that my husband and I started talking about money with our kids when they were very young. As they’ve gotten older, we’ve shifted the conversations to keep them age-appropriate, relevant, and interesting.
Talking about money and family finances may seem like a daunting topic, but the good news is this conversation isn’t any more difficult than others we have with our kids. The truth is, kids are ready for different information at different times and when the conversation about money is relevant to their age, every day can serve as an opportunity to teach the mechanics of money and the values that guide choices on how to spend it.
5 Resources for Teaching Financial Literacy to Tweens and Teens
But how do you start the conversation? T. Rowe Price believes it’s never too early to teach kids the importance of financial responsibility, even if you’ve had poor money habits. These 5 free online resources for teachers and parents can help!
Money Confident Kids®
If you’re not quite sure how to start talking about financial literacy, the Money Confident Kids program is a great resource. Developed by T. Rowe Price, the Money Confident Kids program provides financial literacy basics because they believe all kids need to build a bright future. Resources for parents, educators, and free downloadable magazines help teach the mechanics of money, values to guide choices, how to make well-informed financial decisions, and how to set and achieve financial goals. The Money Confident Kids program assists parents in helping their kids define needs and wants, setting goals, and creating conversations through teachable moments.
These free helpful resources available through the Money Confident Kids program make talking about money easier:
- Start the Conversation– From making big purchases to little ones at the grocery store, using a credit card or online shopping, these moments serve as teachable moments when you can use what you’re doing to start a conversation with your kids about money. Money Confident Kids has a list of teachable moments and suggestions about how to guide the conversation to integrate financial literacy in a meaningful and age appropriate way.
- 30 Day Financial Fitness Calendar– This downloadable PDF provides 30 days’ worth of tips and activities to help teach kids about budgeting, smart saving, and setting financial goals.
- Test Your Money Smarts– Look for the gray box to take this online quiz to see how you or your child scores on basic finance questions. It’s helpful to know what they don’t know so you can figure out what conversations need to happen next!
- Star Banks Adventure®– One of the best ways for kids to learn is through play and Star Banks Adventure is a fun way to reinforce financial literacy knowledge. Star Banks Adventure is available to play on the webor can be downloaded for free for iOS® and AndroidTM devices. To learn more, keep reading or for my full review, click here!
Using Star Banks Adventure Game to Teach Financial Literacy
Star Banks Adventure is a free online and mobile educational game designed to help tweens and teens better understand the basics of personal finance. To play, players partner with alien guide, Odal, to stop Overlord Zek, an evil mastermind set on causing financial chaos. Their goal is to use different star banks to save coins, build space devices to travel to the planet Polaria, and learn important real-world financial concepts in a fun way.
The colorful sci-fi theme features an engaging story, innovative puzzles, and original quiz questions to educate tweens and teens about setting financial goals, saving and spending wisely, earning interest, inflation, and even asset diversification. Tweens and teens solve puzzles, answer quiz questions, and use power-ups to triumph in this space adventure game, while interactive game mechanics make keeping track of game play investments fun and easy.
Using Star Banks Adventure Game in the Classroom
Tweens and teens can certainly play the Star Banks Adventure game at home but it’s also a great classroom tool for teaching about finance. Through the teacher version, the Star Banks Adventure game helps educators deliver key educational components of the game through a Teacher Dashboard website. The dashboard assists with administering the game and a separate mode within the game called the Classroom Mode.
When Star Banks Adventure game play is used in conjunction with MONEY CONFIDENT KIDS resources, teachers can be more effective at introducing real world money concepts to their students. Complete educator resources for teachers at MoneyConfidentKids.com feature a separate teacher guides for middle school as well as high school teachers.
STAR BANKS ADVENTURE and MONEY CONFIDENT KIDS are trademarks of T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. Images courtesy of T. Rowe Price. All opinions are my own.
FORTNITE is a registered trademark of Epic Games, Inc.
YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC.
Android is a trademark of Google LLC.
iOS is a trademark or registered trademark of Cisco in the U.S. and other countries.
