These investing board games for kids are a perfectly fun way to teach your kids, teens, and students about investing.
It can be completely daunting to teach investing for kids and the stock market when you’re not entirely comfortable with investing, yourself.
That’s where these investing board games for kids come in handy – plunk one of these down in front of them, and let them self-discover some really important stock market and investing lessons on their own.
Things like:
- Assets can help you grow your money.
- What net worth is, and why you’d want to pay attention to it.
- How investing involves risk.
- Making decisions about how risky you want to go.
- Public versus private investor information, and other rules of investing.
- Etc.
Some pretty great money lessons there, right?
Let’s dig into some of my favorite stock market and investing board games for kids.
Investing Board Games for Kids
I’ve reviewed each of these investing board games for kids (my son has helped me, too!), and put them in order from youngest suggested age to oldest.
Psst: introducing the stock market for 5th graders? I’d pay attention to Big Money, the Skittles Investment Game, and Mystic Market.
1. CashFlow
Suggested Age Range: 6+ years
Players: 2-6 players
This game beautifully introduces the concept of passive income to a child – in fact, that’s how you win the game. You become the person earning the most passive income each month.
Each player gets their own Financial Statement Sheet, and practices making sound personal and business financial decisions as they work around the board.
The goal is to get your assets + passive income to be greater than your liabilities + expenses.
What a fantastic money lesson for your child to learn early on in life!
Psst: you also might want to check out my investing books for kids and teens, and free stock market games for students article for investing competitions online!
2. Big Money
Suggested Age Range: 8+ years
Players: 2-5 player
Your kids start out with their very own asset in this game, and then are given the opportunity to buy assets with each turn.
And the asset choices are super-fun and kid-friendly, like:
- Grocery Mega-Store
- International Space Port
- Candy Factory
- Advanced Robotics Lab
- High Fashion Magazine
I mean…who wouldn’t want to own one of those?
However, players soon learn that owning an asset can gain you money – like when they earn a return when the industry dice matches their asset card – OR can lose you money, like when they roll and have to pick out a card from “Biz News”.
Biz News cards include things like:
- Demergers
- Entertainment Crashes
- Failed Ventures
- Bubble Bursts
The player who finishes the game with the most cash, wins.
3. Skittles Investment Game
Suggested Age Range: doesn’t say
Players: Group
What kid doesn’t love candy?
The focus of this game is to teach kids about risk and return, and the child with the most Skittles at the end, wins.
Meaning, this game takes a very complex idea – trying to earn returns on your initial investment capital by making low-risk and high-risk decisions – and makes it (deliciously) fun for kids to learn.
Love that!
It’s also super easy for teachers to set up, because you just need to print out the tally card, provide a big bag of Skittles, and gather up die from other games.
That’s it!
Psst: want your child to start investing in real stocks? Check out these 7 stock apps for kids.
4. Cover Your Assets
Suggested Age Range: 8+ years
Players: 4-6
What a funny game name😊.
This game really focuses on building assets, a great money move for kids (and adults) to learn and get comfortable with.
The winner is the first place to get to $1,000,000 in assets.
Assets include things like:
- Gold
- Stamp Collection
- Savings
- Silver
- Cash Under Mattress
- Coin Collection
- Home
- Etc.
Players need to make a pair of each asset in order to claim it. Players can also “steal” assets from others in a few ways (hence the “cover” part of the game title).
I think this game does three things:
- It’s just darn fun to play.
- It teaches kids that they want to focus on acquiring assets.
- Shows them various things that are assets, that they might not know about (like jewelry, coin collections, and stamp collections).
5. Budget: Real World Math!
Suggested Age Range: 9 years+
Players: 2-4 players
While at its heart, this game is about budgeting, it certainly has an investment component to it.
In fact, I think that is what makes it a good way to introduce the idea of investing to younger kids.
Kids can choose to invest in either savings bonds, stocks, or a home. Then, they might land on a space where they “collect dividend” on the stocks they own, or where they can sell their home and get the “equity” from it.
Big investing concepts to introduce younger kids to!
The more accurate their budgets are, the more budget bonuses they earn. And the player with the highest net worth (which includes stocks, savings bonds, home purchase, etc.), wins.
It’s a good game for introducing the stock market for 5th graders.
6. Mystic Market
Suggested Age Range: 10+ years
Players: 2-4 player
This game is pretty cool – not only is it designed to really draw in a child’s attention, but it teaches a really valuable lesson:
When you produce a product to sell, your profit is contingent upon the cost of your supplies to produce it, and what people are willing to pay. And if the market changes and your supply costs change? Well…you might not make a profit at all.
Kids take turns buying and selling potion ingredients, and then crafting actual potions that they get to sell for either a profit or a loss.
Ingredient prices change according to market news (just like in real life!), and the game quickly becomes interesting when you have to think on your feet by swapping out cheaper ingredients so that you still make a profit.
The winner with the most coins at the end, wins!
8. The Entrepreneur Game
Suggested Age Range: 12+ years
Players: 2-6
Did you know that starting a business and being self-employed is a form of investment?
I think it’s important that kids understand investing in themselves, and the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship – which is why I’ve included this game.
In this game, there are two tracks a kid can go on:
- Home-Based Business
- Brick & Mortar Business
Kids start the game with $20,000, and the goal is to end with the highest net worth.
To start a new business throughout the game, you’ll need $10,000 for a home-based business will cost $10,000, and $50,000 for a new brick & mortar business (love the lessons in this – yes, brick & mortar businesses will always have more capital starting costs than an online/home-based one).
Players can choose to do things like:
- Invest in someone else’s business
- Retain a lawyer
- Try to get someone else to invest in your business
- Etc.
The game ends once all players get to the Finish Space. All assets are then added up, and the player with the most net worth wins.
9. Stockpile
Suggested Age Range: 13+ years
Players: 2-5
What I like about this game is that it’s actually all about illegal stuff that happens on the stock market – like insider trading.
That might not sound like something you’d want to introduce kids and teens to, BUT, it can be really effective in teaching them how the stock market actually works.
For example, teens will start to understand that:
- News and what’s going on in a company’s operations can deeply affect its stock price.
- There are rules in place that all stock traders must follow (and why those rules are important in keeping things fair)
- There’s a difference between public and private information
- Etc.
Each player begins with $20,000 to invest. The goal is to buy stocks at lower prices, and sell them at higher prices for a profit.
Warren Buffet would be proud!
Teaching kids about stocks and investing can be as simple as playing one of these investing board games for kids over a period of a few months. Give it a try, and see where you end up! Who knows — next semester they might even enter a stock market game online. And if you're ready for the real deal? Check out these 7 stock apps for kids, and stock apps for under 18 (with some serious parental controls).
Amanda L. Grossman
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