I have never been able to handle this question! When do you teach your kid about eating? About brushing teeth? About taking bath?

You do not. They just learn about all these things. So if you do take your 3 year old to the shop regularly, the kid sees what you are doing. Yes you can teach words like “value” and “price” but do not expect them to learn the meaning of all this in a jiffy.

My daughter started learning about money at her age of 4 years. I would happily let her handle the cash transaction at a kirana store – not possible at a large store! I would encourage her to know the difference between different notes (all she needs to know is numbers). Once she started understanding greater than and less than, she started understanding the “value” of the notes.

Once she started understanding addition and subtraction, she could say how much money to expect back – as long as it was one item!

Now at 7 years of age she confidently goes to the shop to buy mehendi for herself or bread for the house!

  1. Ravinder Makhaik

    The generation gap is amplified in GenNow.

    We were quiet ignorant about value of money till much later, probably there was less money then to see around and even lesser to handle.

  2. Money is not about needing or having. Money is just a “power” over things. Mostly money is made by people who do not need it – because those who need it, spend it and do not let it grow! So managing money (which is far, far more difficult than making it) is a full time job and not a part time job like some of us think!

  3. Most of us learn money management from our parents. Now if they have had good habits like investing in equities, real estate and doing it well, good. Or we get their bad habits – “equities is for gamblers” “keep away from brokers”. Middle class people invest only in nsc, ppf, bank Fd, such kind of advice also hurts, and hurts bad.

    Teaching kids money management without emotions – going overboard on any asset class, or saying “all monies should be in equities” is also very, very difficult.

    If you just make it what is equity, debt, real estate, mf, ul, etc will make it dull n boring. It has to be nice stories, quizzes, puzzles, so that kids can understand and enjoy the learning process.

  4. As far as money management is concerned even genius minds do make mistakes. So children should be given the chance to spend and deal in ‘MOOLAH’ themselves as they will need the skills to manage money. It is like unless you spend and experience you can not learn. Parents should trust their children and let them have their own criteria instead of imposing any prejudices on thier minds that could think better and innovative.

  5. i fully agree with Devang…but will parents and teachers think this necessary? And who will create an interesting syllabus?

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