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Teaching kids about money can feel overwhelming, but the key is starting early, keeping it simple, and making it part of everyday life.
In this TPC Gold soundbite, we’re sharing how we teach our own kids about money—from saving and spending to understanding opportunity cost and financial priorities.
Here’s what we cover:
👶 Teaching Preschoolers – How to introduce the idea that money doesn’t just “appear” and why role-playing with play money (or even Monopoly!) can be a fun way to start.
🏫 Primary School & Opportunity Cost – When kids start understanding numbers, it’s time to introduce trade-offs: “Do you want to spend $25 at the cinema or go kick the footy for free?”
🛍 Comparing Prices & Making Choices – Real-life exercises like shopping around for gifts or choosing between streaming subscriptions can help kids make smarter money decisions.
💰 Aligning as Parents – Why consistency between partners is crucial when setting money rules and expectations for kids.
Money habits start young, and the best way to set your kids up for success is to lead by example and have open conversations about money.
Want More Resources to Help Teach Your Kids About Money?
📖 Read Make Money Simple Again – Our step-by-step guide helps parents manage their own money better, so they can pass down smart financial habits to their kids.
💡 Explore ASIC’s MoneySmart Resources – The MoneySmart website has great tools and tips for teaching kids about money at every age.
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If You Enjoyed TPC Gold | How We Teach Our Kids About Money—Saving, Spending & More! You Might Also Like:
- Ep 229 | How to Release Your Money Fears – Chat with Denise Duffield-Thomas
- Ep 235 | Money Hacks from the Money Queen – Chat with Effie Zahos
- Ep 284 | Kyal & Kara from The Block – How To Renovate, Raise Kids, Run A Business & Not Lose Your Mind in the Process
Transcript
Bryce Holdaway
Yeah, so I’m sure we’ve got many, many parents listening to this and some will agree with what we just said and some will disagree…which is fine. The idea here is just to stimulate some discussion and hopefully give you guys some ideas. But number one, start young. Number two, talk about invisible money. And then number three, look for opportunities where you can have conversations around money, where (even if) you just don’t even think that now is a good time, but they’re watching and they’re absorbing, and it might be a good opportunity.
So Ben, I guess the way that ASIC was suggesting that you introduce this is to do it by age group, right? So what do you talk about when kids are at preschool age? What do you talk (about) when kids are at school age? And then how do you sort of advance them along at high school? And I thought that breaking that up was pretty good. So, because I’ve got one at preschool, one at school. I certainly don’t have any in high school yet; that’ll come at some stage.
Ben Kingsley
Yes, it will.
Bryce Holdaway
So in terms of preschool, it was about introducing them that you need money to buy things. It doesn’t just turn up. There is some form of exchange happening, and largely an invisible exchange. But you know there’s Monopoly. The kids have got play money. You can actually role play and teach them as early as you can. And as Paul Clitheroe said last week, if you’re at school, if you’re counting anyway, why don’t you talk about dollars and cents rather than just numbers. So bring it in where you can.
Ben Kingsley
The dollars and cents, you trade time for money. They start to understand, okay, I’m going off to preschool and I trade my time for learning. Mum and Dad go off to work to trade time for money. If they can understand that concept, then the flow on of that is, well, what’s the value of that time? And the fact that certain people trade their time for higher or lower levels of money. So don’t try and introduce that too youn;, they won’t get it. If they can’t understand the different values of amounts of counting, then start simple. You just wanna say: Mummy and Daddy go off and they spend time there to make money and that money allows us to buy things.
Bryce Holdaway
And spend on things that we choose to. I think you just hit the nail on the head. Don’t make it too complex. Make it simple. But understand there’s a flow, there’s an exchange, there is a trade of time for money in return for something that then the parents have an opportunity to decide where they want to prioritise their money going.
Ben Kingsley
And that’s a good segue into obviously the primary school age, where they’re developing their skill sets around multiplication and division, then you can start to sort of talk more complex. And that’s probably the opportunity cost conversation. So, Harry, if I’ve got $100 and your new basketball runners are gonna cost me $120, how much more do we need to find for us to be able to buy your runners for you? Those types of things are going to be part of that story. And then, Harry this weekend we’ve got free, I’m gonna spend an afternoon with you, where do you wanna go? Do you wanna go to the cinema? Okay, so the cinema’s your choice. Do you wanna go there?
That’s gonna cost us probably about $25 for you to go to the cinema. Do you wanna use that money or do you wanna just go and kick the footy down the park or shoot some hoops down at the basketball stadium or something along those lines, which doesn’t have a cost, and then you can start to sort of see what that story lives.
Bryce Holdaway
Comparing and shopping around, we’ve actually done this exercise with Jack where we said what do want for Christmas and they gave us a list. And then it was a PlayStation versus a Nintendo Switch. So we asked him to go and get on the iPad and compare prices and compare features and then do a pros and cons for each. So he actually enjoyed it.
Ben Kingsley
And this is the time when husband and wife need to be aligned.
Bryce Holdaway
Or partner and partner.
Ben Kingsley
Or partner and partner, good point. Because this is where money conversations go awry and we’re seeing a bit of that in terms of some of the feedback we’re getting from the people using the platform, because we ask them a little questionnaire when they come onto the Facebook group as well and we’re noticing the trend of disalignment through partner and partner. And that happens in our household too with the living and lifestyle budget.
Bryce Holdaway
My hand’s up too.
Ben Kingsley
It’s like okay, so what’s a perfect example right now? So I thought we had enough lights and I thought we had enough Christmas decorations. I think 20 or 30 items is enough, that gets stored into a couple of boxes, but because we’ve now got an upstairs and a downstairs, apparently we needed some lights upstairs. So that’s a good example of, right, okay, we’ve got some lights upstairs now. Now where does that come out of the budget?
Bryce Holdaway
That’s the hidden cost of renovating Ben…Christmas lights.
Ben Kingsley
And that wasn’t out of my provisional jar. You can’t sort of move a little bit of money. But coming back to the kids’ story, is if you don’t have alignment between the parents in terms of the rules that we’re setting up, then this is gonna be difficult, right? Because as parents, we want to see the joy in our children’s face. But in some cases, some of that joy is short-lived in the sense of buying them things as opposed to giving them experiences. And I for one, that is a pain point for me in the household.
Bryce Holdaway
I can see it in your face as you’re talking about it.
Ben Kingsley
I’m just being careful in terms of how I talk about it because I get it, right? I mean, I’m someone who’s not at home as much as other people are. I run a business; I work probably eight to late most days. On the weekends, I’m there, but it’s just important. So I’m guilty of that time work balance in terms of what I’m doing, but I love what I do, so that’s the trade-off for me. Everyone says, you work a lot. You think this is work, but this is my passion, it’s my purpose, it’s what I wanna do, so I work. My life and my children work around that, and I make sure I have enough time for them.
But on the other hand, Jane’s passion and purpose is making sure those kids are wonderfully organised and good mannered and have morals and are adding to society. So there’s a combination there. But I get it, she’s had a tough day or they’re not going well or you know, there’s an ice cream after school or so forth. I don’t want that ice cream after school to be a norm. I want it to be, well, you were great at school today. That was great. I was really proud with what the teacher told me about, so let’s go and get an ice cream. But it is that challenge of, okay we’re out, the kids are screaming, I needed to occupy them whilst I could go and do some shopping or whatever. So you know, there’s a quick little gift, and that for me is like, it’s a quick win. I’m just putting it out there. I’m not telling you how to…I’m certainly no sort of behavioural expert around raising children. My God, I’d be getting an F probably for that myself. But I would say that that’s where the friction in our household was when I was growing up and it didn’t stop right through.
So if you can get on the same page in terms of teaching each other about where you’re coming from with your money plans and what it means for you in the future, that’s the big story here. Because I think if my dad was better at telling my mum: this is what our life is gonna look like into the future, if we do this better here now and make some sacrifice and delay gratification, mum might go: oh I get it. Whereas dad just probably passed on by saying, yeah, look, it’s for our future, we’re gonna retire early. And in some cases, a lot of people can’t see that future.
Bryce Holdaway
That’s a good message about buy-in. There’s gotta be buy-in by all parties.
Ben Kingsley
Yeah, absolutely.
Bryce Holdaway
Hey, a couple of things around comparing prices. I use an opportunity since we have Netflix, Ben. So when the boys can’t find a movie on Netflix and they want to do it on Apple TV, that’s an opportunity that I use: where Netflix, anything you want to watch on that comes all-encompassing, whereas if I have to go on Apple TV, I have to pay more to do that. And that’s actually been something that’s landed for them. And I’ve noticed their behaviour is changing where they request less. Now, don’t get me wrong. We still watch movies from Apple TV and we pay for them, but the frequency has been diminished now that they know that the value that we provide is in that monthly package.
Ben Kingsley
Does that money come out of their pocket money or does that come out of the family budget for you?
Bryce Holdaway
It comes out of the family budget.
Ben Kingsley
Oh, okay. Whereas I would probably say: you want that and that’s your choice. I’d take it out of their pocket money.
Bryce Holdaway
Oh you mean paying for the movie for the kids? No, I haven’t actually done that. That’s a nice thing that you do. Well done.
