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Course 15 · 10 lessons

Money Basics

Ten five-minute conversations that teach a young child what money actually is.

The first course on The Family line, written for the grown-up doing the teaching. Ten short scripts you can run at the kitchen table with a six-to-nine-year-old: where money really comes from, why buying is a trade and not magic, the difference between wanting and needing without the guilt, why the price tag is not the same as what a thing is worth, the three jars, how waiting turns into a skill, a first goal on paper, a first ledger, what to do with money nobody earned, and an honest answer to “are we rich?” No app for your kid, no account for your kid, no homework. Just the words to say and the thing to do while you say them.

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Unit 1 — What Money Is

Four conversations that replace the vending-machine theory of money with the real one.

01
Where Money Comes From

Ask a young kid where money comes from and you will usually hear “the bank” or “the machine in the wall.” That is not a wrong answer — it is an incomplete one, and it is the root of almost every money misunderstanding that follows.

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02
Trading, Not Magic

To a young child, buying looks like a magic trick: you wave a card and the thing becomes yours.

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03
Want and Need

Most versions of this lesson turn into a lecture where wanting things is the villain.

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04
Price Is Not Worth

This is the most valuable conversation in the unit and almost nobody has it with a young child.

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Unit 2 — The Three Jars

Spend, save, give — made physical, then made into a habit and a first goal.

05
The Three Jars

Now the idea becomes a physical object that lives on a shelf.

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06
Waiting Is a Skill

Most kids are told they are either patient or they are not, as though it were eye colour.

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07
The First Goal

“Save your money” is not a goal and no child has ever been motivated by it.

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Unit 3 — Keeping Track

Writing it down, handling money nobody earned, and the question every kid eventually asks.

08
The First Ledger

Every serious investor keeps a record, and it always starts the same way: writing down what came in and what went out.

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09
Money You Did Not Earn

Lesson one said money is stored work.

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10
“Are We Rich?”

Every kid asks it eventually, usually in a car or a checkout queue and always at full volume.

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Not financial advice · Educational only