Toddler finance: Gen Z parents are starting money lessons before kindergarten

Given a persistent state of economic uncertainty, it’s not surprising more American parents are taking financial education into their own hands. According to a recent survey, 93% of parents with children under 18 are now teaching their kids about basic personal finance principles — a significant jump from previous generations. 

Many are starting as early as ages three or four, motivated by a growing recognition that financial literacy is too important to leave to chance to schools.

This shift comes at a time when systems like Social Security and Medicaid are under threat, and when parents are determined to help their children avoid repeating their own financial mistakes. 

Even as schools expand financial literacy offerings, parents are still stepping in to help navigate and fill the gaps left by traditional classroom programs.

Since 2020, the number of states requiring public high school students to take a personal finance course has more than tripled from eight to 27, which means nearly two in three U.S. high schoolers will acquire basic financial knowledge before graduation. 

Many states have now incorporated financial literacy requirements into public education curricula, which financial planner Hersh Kumbhani calls “a huge win.” 

State government financial education resources for young children include Money Smart Wisconsin’s statewide activities, New York’s Office of Financial Empowerment initiatives, California’s K-12 Financial Literacy Initiative and Iowa’s Jump$tart Coalition programs — all providing free lessons, events and programs to teach kids basic money skills.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 2016 report, "Building Blocks to Help Youth Achieve Financial Capability," middle childhood — ages 6 to 12 — is a critical period when children develop foundational knowledge and habits that shape their future financial behaviors, making early education essential for building lifelong financial capability.

Joline Godfrey, founder and CEO of Bounce10, a financial parenting membership platform, has seen this trend firsthand. 

“Financial education for kids sort of got started back in the 1990s, when during the Clinton years people were looking at the whole Welfare to Work movement, and it was seen as yet another strategy for getting mothers off welfare and back to work and then getting kids prepared,” Godfrey said. “People didn't understand the developmental approach to financial education, so they would start in the teen years, and by that time kids' habits were already pretty well baked.”

Her financial education startup, Bounce 10, is focused on kids as young as four years old.

“Because I'm trained developmentally, I thought we need to be getting to these children earlier and normalizing the acquisition of values of language and skill building in a way that they don't then reject down the line, when people make it very boring and dull,” she said.

Other paid financial education resources for kids such as KidVestors, goHenry and FamZoo also offer subscription-based platforms, apps or programs with interactive lessons and parental controls, typically charging monthly or annual fees for access to their financial literacy tools and services.

While the perfect age for financial education depends on whom you ask, many financial educators emphasize the importance of real-world learning at home. 

“A lot of this impact can come from parents just talking about money openly with their children,” he said. “In many families and cultures, money is a taboo topic. I believe children learn a lot from open conversation. Humanizing a message makes it more relatable and therefore more powerful.”

And you don’t need to pay hundreds of dollars for access to financial information; a lot of it is readily available. Recent financial literacy programs and resources for young children include FDIC’s Money Smart for Young People, the American Library Association’s Thinking Money for Kids Program Kits, the American Bankers Association’s Teach Children to Save initiative and Ally’s Adventures with Money.

“With the proliferation and advancement in technology, there are a lot of places where parents can go for financial information — blogs, social media, community organizations and financial advisers,” Kumbhani said. “While having access to these outlets is overall a good thing, I would advise parents to make sure that the sources are reputable and that the education is applicable to their own unique situation. Because personal finance is just that — personal.”