5 financial literacy games you can play with your teens

Thanks go to our guest expert, Lisa Chuma, for another great article. Her recent post on teaching teens to manage money is already one of our most popular. If you’re keen to teach your teens about money, these 5 financial literacy games you can play together are bound to be very welcome.

Lisa is a teenication coach. She helps mums teenicate – communicate and connect with their teens. She believes communication is the cornerstone of an enriching mother-teen relationship and that connected teens become healthy adults. Even though teens act and behave tough, they still need their parents. This is why connecting and communicating with our teens must be a priority, not an afterthought.

Lisa is a proud mother of 3. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, she moved to the UK as a teenager and spent 11 years there before moving to Switzerland 10 years ago.

Interactive learning, through games, is a fun and effective way to teach our children about money and the key financial concepts that they need in life. Games provide a platform to develop and improve their financial literacy by practising problem-solving and decision-making. Learning about money through simulating real-life financial situations, helps our teens to get comfortable with the concept of money and builds a positive money mindset.

Here are 5 of my favourite games to play with my kids that cover the core financial concepts to build a robust financial literacy:

Monopoly

The goal of this classic game is to amass the most money and property by the end of the game. This requires managing money, buying and selling properties, paying rent, borrowing and paying back loans and paying taxes. It also simulates the consequences of poor financial decisions, like seizure of property when in debt, or going to jail.

Payday

Payday is a money management game that teaches kids how to budget. The goal is to meet monthly expenses and build up savings with a monthly salary. The game board is a calendar and players earn a wage after racking up bills and expenses. To win the game, players must demonstrate their budgeting skills and save as much money as they can.

Modern Art

I really like this game because it uses a niche investment type to teach the basic principles of investing. Modern Art is an auction game where players manage a museum, and must auction modern art pieces while making purchases they think will accrue value. The winner is the player who has earned the most money for their museum. The benefit of this game is that it shows how auctions work, while teaching how the value of items can change over time and how high-stakes investments can be as risky as they are rewarding.

Stax

Stax is an online single or multi-player game that teaches the principles of investing in a fast-paced game. The idea is that players have 20 minutes to make 20 years of investment decisions. They can choose investment options like stocks, bonds and index funds and gold. It teaches investment strategy and how to “play” the market safely by maintaining an emergency fund.

Play Stax online here for free

Credit Clash

Credit Clash is a single-player online game about credit scores that your teen can play alone. However, I advise that you serve as a “financial advisor” while they play and give advice from your experience. The game demonstrates how a credit score is structured and how people can accrue good and bad debt. It shows how the ability to pay back debt affects a credit score and how credit scores affect the opportunity to make certain financial moves.

Play Credit Clash online here for free

Getting our teens to think about their money skills, without it feeling like a lecture, is as simple as a family game night! Let me know if there are any other games you love that aren’t on this list.

Many thanks to Lisa for these 5 financial literacy games you can play with your teens, to help teach your teens about money. We can’t wait to organise a games night! If you’d like to find out more about Lisa and her coaching business, you can find her on Instagram here.