5 Reasons Why I'm Teaching My Kids About Money at 9 — When I Didn't Figure It Out Till 40
4.9 Stars · 2,100+ Parents & Children
They've got the thing I ran out of: time.
I didn't touch any of this until my 30s. Dirt poor before that, figuring it out the slow way.
I'm 40 now. I still save, I still try to be smart with it — but the math just doesn't bend for me the way it would've at ten. The window where a little quietly turns into a lot closed while I wasn't looking.
My kids haven't lost that window. That's the whole reason I started this summer.
There's a page in the book that stopped me. It puts a 10-year-old next to their 30-year-old math teacher, Mrs. Smith. Same money set aside, same plan. By the end the kid comes out ahead — and the only thing the kid did differently was start sooner.
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Warren Buffett's in there too — selling gum door-to-door as a kid, buying a used pinball machine at 15. He didn't wait. That's the point.
I can't give my kids a head start on my own life. I can give them one on theirs.
A habit at 9 is still running at 39.
Here's what I believe about money: it's less about what you know and more about what you do without thinking.
The way I spend now is mostly the way I spent at 22. Nobody handed me a better default, so I ran the bad one for years.
This book doesn't lecture. It hands kids things to do. There's "Mix and Match," where they list five things they're good at and five they like, then turn them into job ideas. There's the "Bug List" — write ten things that bug you, invent a fix for each.
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My middle one did the Bug List at the kitchen table and wouldn't stop. Came up with a fix for socks going missing in the dryer. Is it a real business? No. Did she just practice thinking like someone who builds things instead of only buying them? Yeah.
That's the part that follows them. Not a fact. A reflex.
It's a real-life skill — and skills come easy when you're young.
Thirteen years of school and nobody sat me down and explained how money actually works day to day. I'm not blaming anyone. It just wasn't on the syllabus.
So I picked it up in my 30s, the expensive way.
Money's a skill, same as a language or an instrument. You know who learns those fastest. Not the 40-year-old. The kid.
This book treats it like a skill you build from zero. Chapter one starts at the very beginning — what money even is — with a timeline that runs from the first coins all the way to Bitcoin. Then it turns ideas into things you do, like ranking five real investments in order from least to most risky.
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My 9-year-old doesn't know she's learning a skill most adults are still missing. She just thinks the toilet-night-light page is funny. Both things are true.
They build money judgment by playing — not by losing it.
Everything I know about risk, I learned by losing actual money. Not a great curriculum.
My kids get to learn the same lessons with nothing on the line.
There's a page near the back — "To Invest or Not to Invest" — that shows six real business ideas and asks which ones made it. A juicer connected to Wi-Fi. Sauce holders for your car. A night light for your toilet. You pick your winners, then flip to the answer key. (The Wi-Fi juicer raised $120 million and went under. The toilet night light is still around.)
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My oldest got two of six right and argued about a third for ten minutes. He wasn't memorizing anything. He was building the gut sense for "good idea / bad idea" that took me into my 30s to get.
There's a Barbara Corcoran story in there too — she built something real out of almost nothing. The kind of person I'd have wanted to hear about at his age, instead of after.
And the part that sells me: it doesn't feel like learning.
None of the above matters if the kid won't open it. I've bought "good for them" books before. They sit on the shelf.
This one they pick up on their own. That's the difference, and it's mostly down to two cartoon characters.
The Dollar Duo. Mr. Finance, who stretches his body as far as he can make his money last, and Investing Woman, who pulls coins out of thin air. They turn up in the side panels and activities through the whole book.
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My daughter described them to her brother before she'd even read a full page — "there's a guy who stretches and a lady who makes coins appear." That's when I knew she was actually reading it.
To a kid it reads like a comic that happens to be about money. That's the thing a screen can't beat, and it's the reason any of the other four reasons get to happen at all.
Investing for Kids
For children ages 8–12 (and older kids, too) · Written by two people who retired at 45
It's called Investing for Kids, by Dylin Redling and Allison Tom — a couple who retired from their careers in their early 40s and wrote it to teach kids the money basics they wish they'd had at ten.
They wrote it during the pandemic. They don't have children of their own; they wrote it for everyone else's.
The official range is 8 to 12, though plenty of older kids read it on their own. The activities skew younger; the stories, the timeline, and the math hold up well past 12.
It runs 7 chapters: Money 101, Save Your Money, Introduction to Investing, Low Risk/Low Reward, High Risk/High Reward, Diversify Your Investments, and Grow Your Money — built from the basics up.
From the book · Table of Contents
Here's where I got it.
Officially it's for ages 8 to 12, but it reads wider — mine prove it. I waited 30 years to learn this stuff. My kids don't have to. That's worth forty bucks to me.
Questions parents ask before buying
How long does the book actually take to read?
Most kids take about three weeks of casual reading — a chapter or two at a time, with the activities mixed in. It's built to be picked up and put down, not finished in one sitting.
Does my kid need any background knowledge to understand it?
No. It starts at the very beginning — what money is, where it comes from, how to earn it — and builds up from there, every concept on top of the last, in language a third-grader can read.
My older kid is past the official age range. Will it work?
For most kids, yes. The famous-people stories, the timeline, and the math hold up into the early teens. The activities skew younger, but older kids tend to read straight through.
I'm no good with money myself. Can I still do this with my kid?
That was me. You don't have to teach it — the book does. Most parents tell me they picked up a few things reading along.