Teaching Kids About Business and Investing

I have been trying to figure out a way to teach my kids about business and investing. I have posted about their summer job idea of taking care of pets for vacationing homeowners. Today I promised to take them out into the neighborhood to distribute their flyers. I'm going to add one little piece of information to the flyers. I'm going to add that 50% of the proceeds from their business will be invested for college. That way their customers know that they aren't going to just blow their income. I'll keep you posted as to how their enterprise is going.

One other thing I have been thinking about is a good way to teach kids company recognition. My kids have their favorite cereals and drinks and other food products from the grocery store. I think it would be neat to show them how to find out who makes those products. Actually, I could expand it to almost everything they like: books, computer games, bicyles, etc.,...

Through this little project my goal would be for them to learn the difference between a private company and a publicily-traded company. I could teach them how to find out how much money the company makes (revenues) and also how to calculate the company's market value.

My goal isn't to make them experts on business. I don't want to overload them and turn them off. I want to simply raise their curiousity and hopefully it will take off from there.

Comments or suggestions?

Tags: Kids and Money, Summer Jobs for Kids, Teaching Kids About Investing