Forget pen and paper! Use these apps to teach your kids money skills

“Don't rescue your child from a challenge. Teach them how to face it.”

As a parent, you should teach “MONEY MANAGEMENT” skills to your kids. Now the question is, why would you teach financial management to your children at such a tender age? Well, you’ll get too many answers for this question:

To teach your kids the value of money
To make your children good money managers in future
To make your children more financially responsible
To make them more money-conscious, and the list goes on and on.

Teaching money management to kids is not a child’s play. You need to put a considerable amount of effort in it.

Gone are the days when you used pen and paper or sit with the piggy bank to teach money management lessons to your kids. You’re living in the age of smartphones where teaching money managing skills to your children isn’t a herculean task.

Just download some money management apps on your smartphone or tab and help your child understand savings, budgeting, investment, etc. with ease.

There is no recommended age to teach your kids about money. Remember, the early you teach them how to handle money, the better money managers they’ll become in future.

17 Useful money management apps for kids

1. Savings Spree

Though you can’t get this app for free, you can still give it a try. This app is helpful in teaching your kids the importance of saving, spending, donating, and investing. It’s developed by Money Savvy Generation, a financial education company. With the help of a game, it demonstrates the kids how to save money, spend money economically, invest money intelligently, set long-term and short-term financial goals.

In the words of Susan Beacham, founder, and CEO of Money Savvy Generation, “It’s an interactive app that actually allows the kids to frost the cupcakes, so they can see there is an action required to earn the money.”

2. PiggyBot

Children nowadays have a fetish for mobile and love to play mobile games. PiggyBot app, brought to you by Kasasa, is a free parent-designed, kids-tested app that helps kids to create a virtual account and PIN, keep track of their money, manage and maintain their own allowances, and so on. Moreover, it has a colorful interface and ample customizations that make it a hit among kids. For example, besides changing the color of their virtual bank account, kids can also add an image. You and your kids can have a fun-filled financial discussion with the help of PiggyBot.

3. Green$treets: Unleash the Loot!

This app renders financial education to children in a unique way. Here a kid needs to select an endangered animal and earn money to take good care of it, before releasing it back into the wild. This way kids would learn the art of budgeting, saving, and spending. It’ll make them more mature financially.

4. Renegade Buggies

It is an awesome app that’ll teach your kids money skills through a fast-paced shopping game. National Center for Families Learning developed this great interactive app where kids will be able to race a shopping cart and earn “buggie bucks”, which they can use for investments and savings.

5. Bankaroo

An 11-year old girl developed this app, where kids can create a virtual bank account and track their allowances. It isn’t connected to a real bank account, but kids will be able to understand the difference between expenses and savings. Children can use it for free, but it requires a login name and password. They can set financial goals for themselves and use that money to achieve them.

6. FamZoo

It is an ideal app if you want to teach your kids practical money management skills. The app helps to face the financial challenges of the real world. Here, with the help of prepaid credit cards, you can track your child’s saving and spending habits. Kids will have a separate login to check their financial status.

7. Motion Math: Cupcake

It is the best app for nascent entrepreneurs. Kids act like business owners and sell cupcakes, deliver orders, manage costs, and make vital decisions for customer satisfaction. By doing these activities, they're able to understand the nitty-gritty of business.

As per Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children’s Technology Review, “Even though it’s pretend money, you start to understand that if you blow all your money on sprinkles for your cupcakes, you won’t have enough to meet all the customers’ needs and you lose money in the end.”

8. Celebrity Calamity

As the name suggests, kids will act as financial consultants for spendthrift and unmanageable celebrities. Their main aim is to keep the celebrity’s budget in check and control overspending. Apart from helping the celebrities to maintain a sound financial rating, kids must keep them happy.

9. Star Banks Adventure

It is somewhat similar to Candy Crush as kids have to match up tokens and save coins. This online gaming and mobile app launched by T. Rowe Price teaches your children about important financial skills like setting financial goals, saving and spending wisely, asset allocation, inflation, and diversification. Kids can learn financial lessons while they’re on the way to save the galaxy from a financial chaos.

10. Kids’ Money

This app will help your child to calculate the amount of cash required, how much they should save and how long it’ll take to buy an item like an iPod. Kids’ Money prepares children in becoming financially successful and responsible money managers in future. It’s a great interactive system for parents, teachers, teens, kids, organizations and international visitors.

11. The Game of Life

This app’s primary focus is on budgeting, saving and making lifetime investments like buying a house, and so on. It redefines old board games. This board game was created by Milton Bradley in 1860.

12. GoalCard

GoalCard, a Facebook app is mainly designed for the teens to help them trace their money and establish financial goals. It’s very useful for the teens using prepaid debit cards. Users can detect their recent purchases and receive monetary rewards by giving answers to financial quizzes.

13. iAllowance

Allowances and chores go hand-in-hand. Well, kids also love when you pay or give small gifts to them after completing the assigned tasks. iAllowance is a fun app with which you can give gifts to your kids to encourage them for their work. Through this app, kids would understand the real value of money in every walk of life.

14. Rich Kid, Smart Kid

This app is a big hit among kids due to its cartoon-theme. By playing games, kids can learn important financial lessons. Money management is quite a boring subject for children. But, the “Rich Kid, Smart Kid” app has made this boring subject even more interesting and fun.

15. P2K Money

The purpose of P2K Money is to make kids more financially responsible. Apart from tracking allowances and expenses, kids can also create their wish list, add images to the wish list for motivation, and customize the background. Besides, the grownup section here is like a hotcake for someone looking for more financial information.

16. Stock Market Simulator Plus

This app nurtures and sharpens a kid’s investment skills through a ‘genuine replication of the US stock market.’ Users can start with $50,000 and gradually progress to the top. Stock Market Simulator Plus is ideal for new stock players who want to gain knowledge about the stock market before investing in it.

17. Count My Beanz

It is another useful and fun app for your kids, which encourages ‘earning, saving and donating using a kid-friendly currency called Beanz.’ When users sign up, they’ll be provided a Beanz Spending account and a Beanz Savings Account. Thus, it helps kids to become responsible financial managers.

“Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.” - Haim Ginott, child psychologist.

Teach healthy financial habits to your kids and mold them into good money managers. Learning about finances is monotonous and complex. Are you worried about how to teach your child financial lessons? Yes? Well, as long as these apps are there you no longer need to worry. Now, with the help of these apps learning money lessons is more fun and exciting.

Do you use any other apps? If yes, then do share it with us.

Must read: When and how should you make your kids financially literate?

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