If you’re a parent, one rhythm pulses through your soul on a regular basis. I want my child to live a life even better than my own. Even if you haven’t faced great adversity, there’s a parental instinct to protect your kids against those pitfalls that you dove headfirst into. You want them to have more experiences, better influences, and healthier lives.
Most parents long for their children to adopt better habits when it comes to money. So we buy books and we make little cute banks and we pour over curriculum and we create elaborate chore charts. But before we know it, the books are overdue at the library, the banks are nearly empty, and the curriculum and chore charts haven’t been touched in over a month. Instead of trying to create difficult systems (putting entirely too much pressure on yourself), you can teach your child lessons about money in the simple, everyday tasks of life. In particular, grocery shopping is a great way to help your child learn more about healthy money habits. You can teach your kids about money while grocery shopping in these six easy steps.
1. Plan Your Meals
This step requires a little leg work but helps both you and the little people in your house knock out an essential weekly practice. Open your fridge, freezer, pantry, and cabinet doors. Begin planning meals based on what you already have. From there, add items to your grocery list based on what meals you could make if you only picked up one or two extra ingredients.
For more on meal planning, read How to Meal Plan Effectively, print out a FREE Meal Planner, or check out 1 of 6 ALDI $50 Meal plans that have free printable grocery lists, too.
2. Set Your Budget – Together
Kids are rule keepers. They love the opportunity to point out when you fail. This means they could be your greatest ally when it comes to staying on budget. So, it’s a great idea to tell your kids what the target budget is for your shopping trip. That way, they will keep you in check if you start to get off course in the store.
For more on saving money at the grocery store, check out 5 Grocery Store Hacks to Help You Stop Wasting Money.
3. Shop with Cash
Ay yi yi, you say. I get it. I get it. I shouldn’t use credit cards. Yes, I’m always going to insist that credit cards are a bad idea for your budget, but they’re a bad idea for your kids, too. Kids (and honestly most adults) think in concrete steps. The use of plastic basically becomes a fairy tale like way of paying for your goods. Using cash not only helps your kids with vital basic math, but also displays in a concrete way that money is a real life, finite concept. When you swipe a card, your child doesn’t have an inkling how much money is in your bank account or even where that currency comes from. If you really want to drive the lesson home, give your child a small amount of cash to manage while they’re at the store. I often allow my daughters a $2 or under budget to purchase a food (that’s not complete junk food) they love. This helps the girls learn that all spending has limits. Shopping with cash teaches lessons you can’t explain in words alone.
For more on the cash budgeting, read The Best Ways to Navigate the Cash Envelope System.
4. Bring a Calculator
My favorite way to help our girls feel the impact of purchases at the grocery store is to let them use a calculator or calculator app on my phone to tally the total as we shop. I actually find it incredibly helpful for me to stay on track but the regular practice results in a couple of side benefits, too. First, your child begins to memorize the prices of many grocery items. This helps them realize that a box of cereal costs more than a single banana and gain a realization of the concrete cost of eating. Secondly, you can begin to wade through the process of learning that sometimes you have to put an item back if you go over your budget. Keeping a running total helps your budget stay in check.
For other money saving apps you need on your phone, check out The best Apps to Save Money at the Grocery Store.
5. Let Them Pay the Cashier
Some things you learn by doing. If we dine at a restaurant, our girls are expected to order for themselves. If Anna, who is in the eight grade, will be gone for a doctor’s appointment or is out sick from school, she has to e-mail her teachers to see if there’s anything she needs to do. When the girls go to the doctor, I try to let them do most of the talking and ask their own questions. We encourage them to take the initiative to interact with commerce when we are in stores, too. This is why it’s a great idea to allow your child to count the cash and give it to the cashier themselves.
For other ideas on how to teach kids about money, read How to Teach Kids About Money.
I recently appeared on the Today Show, along with my girls shopping in the grocery store. You can read the article and check out the video here.
My book is now available: Slaying the Debt Dragon: How One Family Conquered Their Money Monster and Found an Inspired Happily Ever After. You can also check out The Debt Free Devotional
This post contains an affiliate link. That means when you get a great deal or maybe even something for free, you also help our family pay off our mortgage early. And for that, we royally thank you!
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