We don’t need to tell you that learning how to be good with money is an important life skill, but how are you going to teach it to your children? We’ve pulled together the options in the New Zealand market when it comes to Kiwi kids receiving an education around personal finance.

School programmes

There are number of different financial literacy programmes offered at schools. The content, length and effectiveness of which vary greatly. Most school financial literacy resources are sponsored by banks or directly provided by banks.

ASB’s GetWise has paid facilitators that visit schools to hold a workshop for years 1 to 8 on money management.

Westpac’s Manage Your Money workshops are for high schooler and they have a Zombie Cash-tastrophe game for ages 12 and up.

Kiwibank has sponsored Banquer for years 2 to 8 and Banquer High for secondary schools.

BNZ has sponsored Bamzonia for ages 5 to 13.

Milford Asset Management and Heartland Bank sponsor MoneyTime for children aged 10 to 14. MoneyTime is our comprehensive online financial education game.

The Commission for Financial Capability also provides Sorted in Schools , a programme that provides financial resources and discussion ideas for secondary schools online.

Home options

KidsCoin is a digital programme that teaches about banking, online banking, e-commerce and taxes. As they learn they earn, save and spend KidsCoin dollars using virtual bank accounts. It is available in schools or at home, as well as family workshops.

For kids in their late teens and early twenties, Hannah McQueen’s EnableMe runs an excellent programme for school leavers called EquipMe Now. Two of my kids have done this and say it has opened their eyes regarding their financial situation and opportunities post school - highly recommended.

But what if your child doesn’t attend a school using one of the programmes or you suspect they are not that effective or go far enough?

Using books

There are plenty of books on how to teach financial literacy to kids. Rich Kid, Smart Kid by Robert Kiyosaki is an early benchmark of the genre and I highly rate Scott Pape’s The Barefoot Investor For Families. If you want to be hands on getting your child to develop good attitudes towards money from their early years, you can’t miss with Scott’s down to earth, common sense advice.

Board games

Putting learning into a game situation can make what is potentially an intimidating topic into something enjoyable. Monopoly, Poleonomy, Life and Cashflow for Kids (Rich Dad, Poor Dad) are well-known classics, with Monopoly and Life having digital versions available for those with gaming consoles. For investing in shares, check out Sharenanigans, a fun educational game specifically for New Zealand families.

Online games

Taking it a step further there are two things kids love doing; being online and playing games. So what better way to teach New Zealand kids personal finance at home than with an online game? As far as I’m aware there is only one comprehensive online programme designed to teach money management to 10 - 14 year olds and that is MoneyTime.

MoneyTime is an online financial literacy programme specifically designed for children aged 10-14. The MoneyTime game includes 30 self-taught modules and automatically marked quizzes, covering the full spectrum of personal finance topics as well as career choice, employment and business basics. It is highly interactive and fun, and each module only takes 20 minutes so children can stay focused. Within the game children are rewarded with money for correct answers to spend on avatars and investments to build confidence in making their own financial decisions.

There are also 13 additional modules designed specifically for children to do with you as their parent. These serve to revise and reinforce the learning and to put them into the child’s real family context. They also provide an opportunity for you to have some real conversations about money with your child.

The programme was launched in schools in 2018 and has been very successful. There are over 400 New Zealand primary schools using MoneyTime (as of May 2020). Buoyed by the success in schools, we’ve launched a home version to allow more Kiwi kids access to this important life changing information. We believe this is another important step towards achieving our goal of financially educating a whole generation of Kiwis.

The programme is valued at $89 per child. For a limited time, you can purchase any of our annual subscription packages for 25% off using promo code 7D347X7 at checkout. Click below to learn more.