6 Frugal Lessons to Teach Your Children
Saving skills and financial savvy starts early!
Frugal doesn’t mean cheap, it just means being wise with the money you have. Teaching your children to manage their money now will help them become better money-managers when they’re all grown up!
- Teach your children to engage with their creativity and imagination rather than focusing on material objects. Studies have shown that shared experiences make us happier anyway. Instead of buying the latest video game, take them to a play or cultural event. Visit a park or a museum.
- Don’t be wasteful. Teach your children how to reduce, re-use, and recycle. You can even learn how to compost together!
- Set savings goals and help your children achieve them—even if it’s for a new toy. You can use sticker charts or phone and computer applications to track saving and spending.
- Show your children how money works in the real world. Don’t just swipe your credit card; explain how money is earned and spent. If your children are old enough, you can talk about bank accounts, fees, and balancing checkbooks.
- Shop used. Visit thrift or secondhand stores to pick out great, gently used clothes. Or—
- Shop around. Show your kids that searching for the best deal can save them money. While a pair of shorts may cost $20 at one store, they might be $15 somewhere else. If they keep shopping around, they might find a coupon or a sale that makes those shorts $10! They will be excited to spend that extra $10 on something fun.
Do you teach your children to be frugal? What’s your best lesson?
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Great tips. Being frugal comes natural to us since we don’t have a lot of money!
These are great tips. It is terrible that the world revolves around money so much, but being frugal is a good thing to teach kids.
True thing! It’s will help them so much to learn this young.
Great tips!! My kids are definitely learning how to be frugal and I so proud of how they think. Sometimes they even check me!!
Great tips for sure! We have worked hard with both of our boy to make sure they understand the value of money.
I loved this post! It’s always better to let them see you doing and explain as you go. Children learn what they live as they say :)
Great advice not only to teach them frugality, but also to be kinder to the environment. Whenever we reuse, recycle and purchase second hand we are keeping “stuff” out of the landfills!
It’s great to teach these lessons early. We always talk about the cost of items compared to other items, too, so they can see how much items cost relative to others. My kids see yard sale signs and ask to stop because they know it’s a place where they can get new items at a deep discount.
I gave my 7yo a grocery sales flier and an imaginary $10 to spend. We had a LONG talk about 99 cents and rounding up! It was good to see her making choices about where to spend her food budget, even when i didn’t agree with her purchases. :)