Mike Bowler

This was asked as a comment to an earlier article and I thought it was interesting so I'm moving it to the top.

Bernard Ng asks...


The kids game has simplified the concepts enough that the kids pick up the basics really quickly.

I introduced my seven year old niece to Cash Flow for Kids yesterday and she picked up the basics with no problem. She now understands that there are two kinds of income (active and passive) and that one is better than the other. She understands that fewer expenses is better than more expenses.

This was her first exposure to money concepts and after an hour of playing, she was really starting to grasp a lot of the concepts. She also had an incredible time - she didn't want the game to end. I think we'll all be playing again today

Naturally, there must be someone to teach the concepts to the kids as they're playing. The rulebook isn't so simple that the kids can pick it up entirely by themselves. Having said that, the game makes it really easy for me to teach the kids about finances.

Cashflow (in or out) is represented as physical tokens that the kids put on their gameboards. Passive income, for example, is represented as green circles. The bigger the circle, the more money it's worth so the $10 circle is smallest and the $1000 circle is the biggest. Older kids can follow the actual money values written on the circles while the younger kids just understand that bigger circles are better than smaller circles.

Active income is represented by blue triangles and expenses are red squares. This gives everything a visual and tactile feel that the kids can easily understand. As with the adult games, you win by having more passive income than expenses. Because all the cashflow is represented by tokens, it's easy to see when you have more green circles than red squares. This kids just love this.