Teaching Your Kids About Money Without Boring Them to Tears

How our children learned to track stocks before they could do long division

Let's be honest — most kids would rather watch paint dry than listen to a lecture about compound interest or emergency funds. Yet somehow, my son Brady runs to the car after school eager to check if his stocks are up or down for the day. My son Tyler understands concepts like corporate earnings reports and how they affect stock prices.

How did Emily and I manage this small miracle? Not through forced lessons or dry textbooks, but by weaving financial education naturally into our family's daily life. Here's how we've approached it.

Make It Real, Not Theoretical

Children learn by doing, not by being lectured. Instead of abstract discussions about the importance of investing, we've made our kids active participants in the process.

The centerpiece of our approach is an app called Greenlight. It functions as both a digital allowance system and an introduction to investing. Our kids each have their own debit card linked to the app, giving them responsibility over real money. But more importantly, they can use the app to buy fractional shares of stock in companies they recognize.

What's a fractional share? Simply put, it means they don't have to buy a whole share of a company. If Apple is trading at $100 per share, they could invest just $10 and own 1/10 of a share. This makes investing accessible even with small amounts of money.

The beauty of this approach is that it transforms abstract financial concepts into tangible experiences. When Brady checks his stocks and sees they're down, it sparks natural questions: "Why did that happen? What makes stocks go up or down?"