Picture Books for Money Skills

Here are four basic elements to teach kids about  and some picture books for money skills you can use to support the teaching of each element:

Things Cost Money – Kids are never too young to start understanding that everything we buy, consume and use, costs money. From the groceries in our refrigerator to the toys in their room, the roof over our heads to the clothes on their back, it all costs money. What is an easy way to convey this? When they want something from the school store or at the book fair, point out the price tag on the shelf. Make them look for it and ask them how
much it costs. Once they better understand this concept, you can leverage it to introduce the concept of needs vs. wants, and how these are prioritized. If you want four awesome picture books for money skills that help support this message, check these out!

Talking about money can be hard for lots of people, especially parents and their children. In a 2021 survey by the investment firm T. Rowe Price, 36% of parents with children under age 18 said they were either very or extremely reluctant to discuss financial matters with them. Add in the 26% who said they were somewhat reluctant, and you have a stunning 62% majority of Americans.

Asked about the reasons for their reluctance, 56% of parents said their kids were too young to understand, 41% said they had too many other things to worry about, and 28% admitted being embarrassed by the state of their own finances.

Fortunately for parents who lack the expertise, time, or inclination to discuss money matters with their kids, there are plenty of books on the subject. For younger kids, reading a book together is also an easy way to facilitate a conversation about money, including difficult topics, such as when a parent loses their job or the family can't afford to buy something the child wants.

How young is too young to begin? A review of the academic literature by two child development experts at the University of Cambridge in England suggests that by age 3 or 4, most kids have figured out that money can be used to buy things, though they might not understand that coins have different values (and big coins aren’t always worth more than littler ones) until age 5 or 6. By age 7 or 8, many kids have a pretty good grasp of those concepts and even of how money substitutes like credit cards work.

So in this review of the best financial books for kids, we start with a few titles for pre-readers and work our way up to books that kids can read on their own. For the details on how we chose these particular books, please see the “Why Trust Investopedia?” section below.