Family
Teaching children about money without a sales pitch
Free, non-commercial material exists from public bodies, which matters because much of what is marketed to schools is sales material.
The habits that carry into adulthood form earlier than most parents expect, and the useful practice is less about lectures than about letting a child make small, real decisions with a limited amount and live with the result.
Public bodies publish free, age-banded material for exactly this, non-commercial and without a product behind it. That matters, because a great deal of financial education distributed to schools and families is produced by firms that sell financial products.
Three things are worth covering before a teenager has an account: how interest works in both directions, what a credit record is and how it is built, and how to recognise an offer designed to be misread. The third is the one most often skipped and the most immediately useful.
Doing household budgeting visibly, with the real numbers at a level appropriate to the child's age, teaches more than any curriculum. It also makes the constraints understandable rather than arbitrary.
What to do next. Use free material from a public body rather than anything produced by a firm that sells financial products.
studentaid.gov outranks this page. Rules, figures and dates change
between academic years. This is written to help you read the official sources, not to
stand in front of them. Start there.
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