Help your kids learn the value of money, how to save and how to budget with these simple printable sheets.
How to Budget
When your kids are little, you feel like all of the days go by so slowly. As they start to get older, time flies by and all of the sudden you worry that you haven’t taught them everything, all of the life skills they need to be productive members of society. That’s the point that we’re at with my teenagers – our oldest lives out of our home, only a little bit of time before my middle child leaves home for college and our youngest is in junior high.
One of the skills I really want them to learn is how to budget. Depending on how old your kids are, you will have to approach money and budgeting accordingly. While my kids were little, they didn’t have the capacity to comprehend what Roth IRAs are or how the stock market works (truthfully, I’m still trying to wrap my brain around this stuff!). While this post will benefit teens a lot, kids are never to young to learn about money.
How to make a budget
The truth is, you can’t really teach your kids about money and budgeting if you don’t have a hold on finances yourself. Wait… let me rephrase that – you can teach them what not to do, or how you’ve made mistakes, etc. But the first step in teaching your own kids, is to get your own stuff together. My budget binder is a great place to start if you need some extra help.
To make things easy for kids to understand, here are my suggestions on what to explain and how to break things down:
- What is a budget?
In plain terms, a budget is how much money you earn and how much money you spend. You can give examples of what that means your family (without giving specifics of your income/expenses.. you don’t want to overwhelm kids, but give small examples of how it relates to them).
Explain that budgets can be for a week, a month, a year and why it’s important to have a plan with money. - How to make a budget?
The best thing to do is sit down and put pen to paper with them. Help them see exactly how their money is coming in (ie: chores, babysitting, a job, birthday money) and where it is going (ie: shopping, entertainment, saving for something).
You can use my budget binder as a guideline and I’ve included a “Money Tracker” and “Savings Sheet” in this post to help with this as well. - Adjust the budget
One of the biggest things your kids will learn as they leave your home is that jobs change and money changes. They will need to adjust their budget accordingly. As their parent, you can help them see this, under your roof and work through it with them.
Download these printable sheets to help kids understand budgeting. For personal use only.