Financial mistakes board games teach kids

By Aaron Crowe

As a father who writes about personal finance for a living, I do everything I can to teach my daughter about money. She has an allowance, a college fund, and a savings account, all of which we discuss the ins and outs of.

To make her financial education more fun, we play board games such as Monopoly and the Game of Life at home. She’s 9 years old — an age that seems to be more interested than any other in board games. That’s great, but the games aren’t turning out to be as full of financial literacy as I had hoped.

In fact, they have enough real-life errors in them that I’m amazed anyone says that board games are a good way to teach children about money. The games may help children learn to count money, but otherwise they’re not doing a great job of teaching money skills.

I talked to a few game experts and board game designers, who admitted that there really aren’t any top-notch board games to teach kids about money. They help children look into the real world of their parents — paying bills and going to work, for example — but they’re meant to be fun first and educational second.

There’s much more to this story. Read the full story at WiseBread.com, a client of Aaron Crowe, a personal finance freelance writer.