How to Talk to Kids About Investing (Even at 5)

Most parents think investing is a conversation for teenagers. It isn’t. You can plant the earliest seeds at age five without any complexity. By ten, your kid will be years ahead of where most adults were at 25.

Full disclosure: this is one of my favourite topics because I opened my own first brokerage account at 19 (on paper, posted in the mail, before apps existed). I want your kids to be years ahead of where I was.

The three ideas kids actually need

Forget the technicals. Kids don’t need ETFs or dividend reinvestment plans. They need to understand three things:

1. Money can make money by itself if you leave it alone.
2. You can own a tiny piece of a real company.
3. Time is the main ingredient, not being smart.

That’s it. Everything else is detail they can pick up later.

Age by age scripts

Ages 3–5: Keep it story-shaped. “Money is like a seed. If you plant it and don’t dig it back up, it grows into a tree.”

Ages 6–8: Add a real company. “You know Bluey? Bluey is made by a company. A company sells small pieces of itself called shares. If you buy a share of a company you love, and the company does well, your share is worth more later.”

Ages 9–10: The doubling penny idea. “If I gave you a penny today, and it doubled every day for a month, how much would you have at the end?” Most kids guess a few dollars. The answer is over five million. This is compound interest in one experiment.

Three activities to try this week

1. The Disney share game. Look up the share price of a company your child loves. Talk about owning a tiny slice. If they had $50, how many shares could they buy?
2. The seed jar. Put a $1 coin in a jar labelled “growth.” Add another $1 each month. After a year, imagine each of those coins made you 5c a year on their own. That’s compound interest in a jar.
3. The Monopoly conversation. Next time you play, ask: “why do you think the person who buys property tends to win?” Kids get this fast.

What I do with my own girls

At six and eight, my girls know that some of my money “works” for me by being invested. They’ve watched me open my app and check my brokerage account. We’ve discussed interest (they’ve seen their bank balances increase with monthly interest payments) and compound interest, and what buying into a company means.

None of it happened in a formal lesson. All of it happened in normal moments where I said what I was doing and why (the car has been amazing for these conversations, especially as we drive by different shops they know!).

The bigger frame

Small money moments build lifelong habits. The investing habit is one of the most powerful you can build.

Module 5 of Money Wise Kids: The Parent’s Playbook covers age-appropriate ways to introduce growth, compounding, and ownership without turning it into a maths lesson.

👉 Get The Parent's Playbook here