Monopoly and Junior Monopoly - great learning tools for kids

Parents are always looking for ways to teach kids the value of money, and have a variety of tools at hand from allowances to rules about how any money, from allowances to cash gifts should be spent.

For example, you can agree to split the money evenly between

• a long-term savings account;
• a "half-and-half" account, where the child and parents each contribute half the cost of a special item purchase; and
• a "free fund", where the child is in charge with how the money is to be spent.

An old stand-by board game, now of course available in electronic form, is Monopoly (with Junior Monopoly for the younger kids). There's a lot to be learned in this game, from simply counting by ones, fives, tens and so on to ideas of long-term investment vs short-term gain and even to seeing how keeping a "rainy day" fund might just come in handy in case of emergency (or jail).

If you've lost all your Monopoly money, you can go to the official Monopoly site to print more out -- but no cheating!

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