What money skills do children need to be financially independent adults?

Growing from a child to an adult means acquiring a lot of skills, including money management ones.

It can feel hard to know where to start teaching your child about money, especially when they're young. Starting at the other end and looking at what they need to know as an adult can make sure you cover all the essentials. This article will give you a list of all those skills and some starting points of how to look at them. There are deliberately no ages, because children are all very different, and many of these concepts will need to be taught more than once, making the 'lesson' more complex and real world as they grow older. However the list is in a rough order from easier to harder concepts.

ð     Needs and wants - the perfect starting point. Have a look at our needs and wants game to get you started.

ð     Saving and spending - another great early concept to get across. Physically separating their money with piggy bank labels can help here.

ð     Advertising & marketing tricks - this is definitely one that you will need to cover more than once. This post has some starting ideas.

ð     Budgeting - if they've grasped needs vs wants, and saving vs spending, then they're ready to start budgeting. Involve them in your family budget plans too.

ð     Calculating change - this is where people often start, but we recommend waiting until they understand a few money concepts first. Money doesn't need to be all about maths.

ð     Current & savings accounts - they'll need to have a firm grasp on digital money first.

ð     Loans - another topic to cover more than once. One of our choose your own adventure books can let them learn about loans and potential consequences before they do it in real life.

ð     Credit cards - love them or hate them, its important that kids understand the pros and cons.

ð     Contactless payments - this is linked closely with understanding digital money.

ð     Keeping PINs & passwords safe - financial security is so important.

ð     Payslips - interpreting a payslip can feel harder than it should. But if you want to make sure your pay is right, you need to understand all those deduction.

ð     Taxes - this can get really confusing even for grown ups. Start simple, with what taxes are for. They're covered in The Hoard Book workbook too.

ð     National insurance - a tax that's worth mentioning separately.

ð     Pensions - you can find this in the workbook as well. It might feel odd talking about pensions with young children, but planning for the future is really important.

ð     Salary sacrifice - understanding the pros and cons can help them make good decisions on this.

ð     Exchange rates - holidays are a great opportunity to cover this in real life! Or there are other ideas here.

ð     Spotting financial scams - staying safe. Find out how to teach them to be financially safe online here.

ð     Rent - they need to know rent is, what it covers and what it doesn't. You might want to talk about tenant and landlord responsibilities and rights here too.

ð     Mortgages - there's no right or easy answer when it comes to rent vs mortgage, but they do need to understand the options.

ð     Paying household utilities - including what to do if you don't have the money to pay them.

ð     ISAs - and other tax free savings options. They need to think about short term and log term saving as part of this.

ð     Investing - you can find a whole blog post on this here.

You can get this list of money skills as a checklist here.