Resources
- Warren Buffett’s Secret Millionaires Club (Link)
A video series inspired by value investing’s most famous practitioner.
- Bizkids (Link)
Videos, blog, and games
- It’s A Habit (Link)
Sam Renick’s site devoted to teaching kids about money concepts. Includes articles, newsletter, and links to many resources.
- Hands-On Banking (Link)
Their tagline is “Money Skills for Life”. Videos appropriate at youngsters from elementary through high school.
- Finance In The Classroom (Link)
A collection of resources from lesson plans, videos, and exercises covering K-12. The activities by grade are especially worth a look.
- Flocabulary (Link)
Hi-quality video lessons. Seems directed towards teachers and has a paywall but there’s a free trial
- Khan Academy (Link)
I’ve watched all the Khan Academy finance vids. It’s is a great source but probably out of reach for a middle schooler.
- Two Cents by PBS (Link)
A weekly series about personal finance.
- Camp Millionaire: A Money Workshop For Children (Link)
A game and activity-based financial education program for children 8 to 16 years. This site is one of my favorites for learning about value investing and mental models. The camp sounds awesome, just not sure if it will be in your area.
- Children’s Business Fairs (Link)
An organization that helps towns create local business fairs operated by kids. These fairs look like flea markets or science fairs. They are nationwide and you can even bring one to your town.
A note on games
I would credit a lot of my reasoning about business and money from playing games. While actually investing is the ultimate game to learn from here are some of my recommendations to get kids and teens starting to think about investing.
- Extremely incomplete information games: Poker and Magic the Gathering
As a trader trainee, our curriculum included lots of poker. There is no better controlled environment for learning to make decisions under uncertainty. Many fellow trainees had extensive Magic the Gathering backgrounds for similar reasons.
- Fantasy sports and sports betting
Point spreads and draft positions are valuable early lessons in market efficiency
- Tabletop games
Catan (Link)
Richer than Monopoly and less antagonistic. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t enjoy playing this game. Lessons in negotiation, market dynamics, odds, and planning.
Acquire (Link)
A cool intro to stocks using a real estate theme
Power Grid (Link)
A bit higher on the complexity scale. Auctions, networks, optimization, opportunity costs, replacement costs, and cutthroat market dynamics.
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