How is Teaching Kids about Money like Teaching Them a Sport?
Posted by Nancy Phillips on Sun, Jan 29, 2012
As I talk to more and more parents about teaching their children money skills, the similarity between learning a sport and learning good money skills becomes striking – the basis for mastery is the same!
Learning a sport always starts with fundamental, basic skills which are built upon once those skills can be consistently performed. Whether you’re talking about football, hockey, dance or golf, each sport involves dozens of skills which must be learned and mastered before advancing to the next level.
Money skills work the exact same way. It’s not all academic theory like we may have thought. Financial life skills must be learned, practiced and internalized so they become part of the long term memory. Rather than feeling intimidated about all the theoretical concepts you need to teach your children about money to help them become financially successful, you can give a big sigh of relief knowing that what you really need to do is teach simple, age-appropriate building blocks that you can then add on to over time as your child becomes proficient at each skill. Repetition and consistency are key, not complexity. Keeping it simple and fun will lead to success through building good habits and decision making skills. 
With a young child, if you give them the opportunity to count coins, use cash to buy items at the store and regularly divide up their allowance into the give,invest,save and spend categories, this will give them practice with basic math skills in real-life settings. Once they learn basic hands-on numeracy skills and understand the fundamental concepts, they will be able to learn how to perform multiplication and division on paper and eventually in their heads.
Once they master these skills, they can start to figure out percentages and begin to calculate how much an item is discounted when they see a 'sale' sign in a store. If you are out at a restaurant, ask your teen to check the bill for any errors and work out the percentage for the tip. This will help prepare them to understand interest rates. Exercises like this are invaluable for the brain in order to help make the lessons concrete. Using technololgy to calculate all math questions prevents these learning opportunities from occurring.
Basic financial skills are life skills that will make a profound difference in your child's life as they grow up and forge their own path in the adult world. As parents, one of the greatest gifts we can give our children today is the opportunity to practice real-life financial skills. We take the time to get them to sports practices; we need to be equally dedicated to creating daily conversations and “practice times” to learn about managing money. A few minutes a day can significantly impact their long term financial well-being and success.