9 Simple Money Projects for Kids & Preteens (to Master Money)

Does your child need to learn a bit more about how money works? Help them choose a money project for kids below.

Money projects for kids are a great way to kick-start, or further, their understanding about how money works.

The projects below will help teach your kids things like:

• How to earn extra cash
• How to set a savings goal
• How a business earns money
• …and so much more

I mean, this is exciting stuff!

Simple Money Projects for Kids

Below are some seriously interesting, engaging, and money-lesson-serving money projects for kids, tweens, and even teens.

Have them choose one, try their best, and soak up all those money lessons (sometimes the failures teach us more than the successes).

1. The Earn Your First $100 Project

$100 is a huge amount of money for most kids (I know it would’ve been a mind-boggling amount of money for me!).

What if you suggest your child work on earning an entire $100 this summer (above and beyond any allowance or chore commissions they get)?

There are lots of extra cash-earning opportunities for kids in summer.

Here are some ideas to get them started:

Cash-Earning Resources for Kids:

• ​19 Summer Jobs for Kids (Aged 13 or Younger)​
• ​Lemonade Stand Worksheets (build a business plan)​
• ​100 Chores to Do Around the House (Paid and Unpaid)​

2. The Chocolate Business Project

This project just makes my heart sing – I literally created it out of love for chocolate businesses my son developed after watching Willy Wonka for the first time in Kindergarten.

Your child is going to learn about business in a very sweet way: by researching chocolate companies, learning about their business, touring their facilities (either in-person or virtually), and even looking at investing in them.

There’s more:

• They’ll create their signature chocolate bar recipe
• They’ll learn to price their chocolate bar
• They’ll deep-dive into a chocolate company that they choose
• They’ll do a competitor analysis of other chocolate companies
• …and so much more

There’s just so much learning here!

3. The Family Bank It! Money Saving Challenge

A few months ago I ran a live Bank It! Money Saving Challenge with my readers (you want to get on my email list by subscribing to an optin of mine so that you can be part of these things, too!).

It’s a challenge I created about 10 years ago, and I realized it would be perfect for families, kids, and teens to all do together.

Here's how this works:

• Choose a month to do this challenge in.
• Choose where the extra savings are going to go – maybe for a family vacation, for a purchase the whole family will enjoy, or in each individual person’s savings accounts (if everyone is old enough to do this themselves), etc.
• For that entire month, have the whole family save all of the receipts they can (after scanning them into the free Ibotta and Fetch for cashback, of course).
• Add up all of the “savings” that show up at the end of each – from coupons, sales, clearance section, etc.
• At the end of the month, add up the grand total of “savings”, and actually move that money from your checking to your savings account (on top of what we save each month, anyway).

In other words, you’re going to Bank It!

For example, if I have the following from a month's worth of receipts (of course I'll have more, but this is just an example):

⭐ Target: $2.97 circle savings

⭐ CVS: $4.97 savings

⭐ Walmart: $8.97 savings

At the end of April, I would put a total of $16.91 extra into our savings account.

Here’s my full-length video on this challenge:

Here’s a 60-second update on how my own challenge went earlier this year:

4. The Summer Mini-Savings Goal Project

Two summers ago, my son set his first mini-savings goal.

To be honest, it blew his mind when he reached it about two weeks later (he got lucky – keep reading to find out how).

A little background: he's pretty much obsessed with Sonic. For his Kindergarten graduation, we bought him a Tails action figure as a gift, and he was absolutely surprised + delighted.

But (you can probably see where this is going)…he decided he needed to have a Robotnik figure, with a drone, to go with it.

And THAT'S where I saw an $$opportunity$$.

Here's How We Set it Up

I grabbed his wallet and sat him down to explain the power that he has: he can buy the toy himself.

And that if he doesn't have enough money right now to do it? Well, he can save his money from one allowance to the next one and to the next one until he can buy it.

I let him count the money that he currently has from his $5-per-week-allowance – turned out, he had $5 left.

Next, we shopped online to find out not only WHAT he wanted to buy, but to get a cost (our target savings amount).

Two Robotnik action figures caught his eye:

• 4″ Robotnik Figure from Walmart: $10.28
• Giant Eggman Toy: $29.99

Then I explained how long it would take him to get the first one, and how long it would take to save up for the second one (a simple calculation of subtracting the $5 he already has from the price, then dividing the remaining price by $5, to get the number of weeks he'd need to wait/save).

He quickly understood that he could get the first one a lot sooner – at which point we had a discussion about how sometimes it's good to hold off and wait for the one “you really want”, even if it takes longer to get it.

After giving it some more thought, he knew that the first one – because it has a drone – was the one he wanted anyway.

I gave him a brief explanation about sales taxes, and added that into the cost, to come to a total target savings goal of $11.13.

My son already had $5, so he just needed to save his money from two more allowances (two more weeks) to get the toy he wanted.

Wellllll…he did great with saving the money from the first allowance.

And about mid-week on the second allowance cycle? He actually lost a tooth and the tooth fairy came (I wonder if he did that on purpose…:)). What luck!

After the tooth fairy, he had enough money (plus some change to spare).

5. The Factory Tour Business Project

Have you ever taken a food factory tour with your child?

They are one of the coolest ways to spend time as a family doing an educational activity together (plus, if it’s a food factory, then there’s usually a free sample waiting at the end).

I want to take your next factory tour to a whole ‘nother level by adding in this set of free factory tour printables.

Your child will get a bit up to speed on the business before you guys leave for the tour, and they might even have some juicy questions to ask on the tour itself from their research.

Then, after the tour, there’s a follow-up set of questions for them to think about and answer.

Great business lessons here.  

6. The Mini-Selling Project

Everyone knows about the lemonade stand for kids. It’s pretty iconic in our culture.

But what about having them make something else, and try to sell that?

Pick a craft to make, price it, and try to sell it.

Here are some resources to help:

• 22 Simple Things Kids Can Make and Sell
• How Kids Can Price Their Product to Sell
• 5 Third Grade Market Day Ideas (from Dollar Tree)

Hint: I did this as a kid with my close friend – we decided to make bean bags and try to sell them. Didn’t work out so well, but I still have the memories, the fun, and the business lessons from it.

7. The Lemonade Stand Business Project

Okay, okay – let’s not forget the Lemonade Stand.

I mean, who hasn’t attempted to make lemonade and sell it to some unsuspecting neighbors out walking their dog on a Saturday?

But let’s give this age-old practice a bit of a makeover.

I’ve got 12 lemonade stand ideas that will turn the typical lemonade stand into some serious business and money lessons for your child.

8. The Christmas Gift Buying Project

I know, I know – why would you start a Christmas project in the summer?

Well, because your kids and teens need time to save up their money. Especially since they likely don’t make very much right now.

Starting this money project in the summer will give them a solid 4-6 months before they need the money to be there to start buying their Christmas gift.

9. The Unicorn Savings Challenge

Here's the thing about kids and money: they don't always get it consistently (and yes, I think consistency is key – read more about how to set up a Kid Money System here).

But you still want them to learn about money, like how to save it and manage it and all that, right?

That's why I created the Unicorn Savings Challenge.

It allows your child to work on a savings challenge, even if they don't always have money to put aside for their goal.

Now it’s time: help your child choose one of these kid money projects they’re curious enough about to get started with, and that will be fun/interesting enough to keep them at least semi-focused throughout. And if that doesn’t happen right away? Come back, and choose another.