Kids Financial Literacy – The Best Resources for Middle Schoolers

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I have absolutely no idea why financial literacy for kids is not taught in public schools. However, as we homeschool, this is something we have been doing for a number of years.

This post is aimed at older elementary kids and middle school-aged children. But kids financial literacy is something that should be taught as soon as you think your children are ready.

For younger children playing shop, or playing board games with money will be a great starting point.

All children certainly by the age of 12-14 should have at least a basic knowledge of:

1. What a debit and credit card is.
2. Basics of budgeting.
3. Saving accounts
4. Healthy spending habits.
5. How to make money, even through simple household chores
6. An understanding of digital payments.

Within this post, I am sharing with you some of the resources we have used (or are still using) to teach financial literacy to kids.

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Kids Financial Literacy

As we are currently in middle school most of these resources are aimed at children aged between 10 and 14 years old. However, they can all be adapted for both younger and older students.

Teaching financial literacy to middle school students is so important. The earlier you start to educate the kids about personal finance and financial literacy the better.

These are the absolute best resources for financial literacy.

Financial Literacy Books for Middle School Students

We absolutely love books, and apart from the infographic guide, we have all of the financial literacy books listed below. The infographic guidebook is something that we have just come across while I write this post. It is now in my Amazon cart!

• The Economics Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained
• Usborne Money for Beginners
• Usborne Business for Beginners
• The Infographic Guide to Personal Finance: A Visual Reference for Everything You Need to Know
• Investing for Kids
• Finance 101 for Kids
• How to Turn $100 into $1,000,000: Earn! Save! Invest!
• Cartoon Introduction to Economics, Volume I: Microeconomics

Financial Literacy Curriculum

If you want a more formal curriculum for teaching financial literacy I highly recommend this Moneytime. This is the financial literacy curriculum we are using and absolutely love it, check out our MoneyTime review here.

Moneytime is aimed at children aged 10-14. The program uses self-directed lessons to do the teaching for you. No pre-work is needed. Perfect for our homeschool! There are 30 modules, online quizzes, and awards and certificates. You will receive 25% off if you click on one of my links.

Mr. D Math offers a 32 week homeschool economics curriculum for middle school, and a high school economics course worth 1/2 credit. Check out our review of Junior Economics we really enjoyed it.

Financial literacy for teens from Beyond Personal Finance is a great real-life curriculum teaching kids real problems adults face financially after they graduate. This is less theoretical and more hands on.

Free Financial Literacy Books

It is amazing how many FREE resources you can get if you know where to look. We reached out to a number of the Federal Banks of America and got lots of kid’s worksheets sent to us for FREE.

Learning Center and Money Museum – Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. They will send you some workbooks, but they have LOTS of FREE resources on their page. Including a fun interactive online game.

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta – send free worksheets and very large printables to hang.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York – send up to five FREE comic-style workbooks and also have lesson plans for all ages. They offer this in both English and Spanish.

Reserve Bank of Dallas – aimed at high school-aged children, but the FREE resources and free workbooks are very good.

If you are looking for even more worksheets to teach financial literacy these from My Teaching Library are awesome, they are not free though, but very reasonably priced.

Financial Literacy Games for Middle School

We love gameschooling in our homeschool. So we are always on the lookout for more educational board games to play.

I find it so rewarding watching the kids play having no idea that they are actually learning too! These are our favorite ones that help with financial literacy.

• The Entrepreneur Board Game
• Financial Peace Junior Kit: Teaching Kids How to Win With Money
• Stock Exchange Market Board Game
• Monopoly – you almost definitely will have a copy or two of monopoly laying around, why not dust it off and have a game! This is a great way to teach kids about money, mortgages, and buying and selling houses.

Free Homeschool Personal Finance Course

If all of the above doesn’t work for you, I highly recommend these three companies. They offer FREE financial literacy curriculums for kids of ALL ages.

• Choose Fi has a full curriculum for grades K-12. We have only looked at the middle school resources, and there are 50 FREE lessons!
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation again has a curriculum for grades K-12 and is available for free with immediate download.
• Actuarial Foundation – This four-part financial literacy program features interactive PDFs to provide high school students with hands-on experience in all phases of money management. As Freddie is only 11 we haven’t tried this, but it gets excellent reviews from parents of older children.

Stock Market Games for Kids

One of our favorite go-to for live online classes is through Outschool (check out our review here), and even for financial literacy, they have an amazing class on the Stock Market Game.

We have taken the course with Lisa Kornberg, and we highly recommend it. She teaches the basics of how the stock market works and they play a stock market trading game.

It is an excellent way to understand and “play” the stock market.

Let me know in the comments below which kids financial literacy resources you found the most useful.

Last Updated on 19 May 2022 by homeschoolof1