These cards can spark a conversation about money

It’s time for a couple of conversation starters with your kids: What is something you really want to buy but don’t need?

And this one: If you suddenly received $1 million, would you save it, spend it or do something else with it?

For many parents, posing questions like these to your teens around the dinner table just might break the ice to help them become more money savvy. At least, that’s the hope of researchers at the University of Chicago’s Financial Education Initiative.

They’ve developed a creative card game called “Talking Cents,” with more than 100 cards in the deck posing questions designed to make it easier for families to breakdown money taboos and have deeper conversations of all kinds about saving, spending, investing and charitable giving.

Those are the basics, but the cards also nudge families to dig deeper into how they value money, said Rebecca Maxcy, the research organization’s director.

Maxcy’s position couldn’t be clearer. “We just want people to start talking” about money topics, she said in a recent interview. “It’s that simple.”

Research shows that families — grandparents included — are the most influential source for learning about money. Unfortunately, those talks and learning opportunities are frequently hit and miss.

That’s a mistake — something the card questions aim to correct by encouraging both deep and lighthearted discussions.

Three years of research went into designing and developing “Talking Cents,” including field-testing the cards with parents and about 2,000 kids across the country.

Recommended for kids age 7 and older, the cards were introduced in late 2020 in partnership with Magnetar Capital Foundation. (To order the cards for $20, and to check out an online discussion guide designed to keep the talking going, go to the Financial Education Initiative website at https://financialeducation.uchicago.edu/. A Spanish version of the cards is in the works.)

Maxcy recommends discussing no more than three cards per setting, and keeping in mind that there are no wrong answers to the questions.

What I particularly like about the conversation cards is that they handle such a variety of money topics, including lending money to family and friends, wanting to buy something you don’t really need, suffering the consequences for making a bad choice, and whether having money makes people happy.

My favorite question was this: “If you had to leave the house quickly with any three things, what would they be?”

Conspicuously absent from the card deck is typically a question kids ask mom and dad: “How much money do you make?”

As Maxcy explained, talking about money doesn’t necessarily need to involve a conversation involving dollars and cents. “So many people equate their salary or hourly wage with their selfworth,” she said. “The question ‘How much money do you make?’ can feel so intensely personal because it has no context.”

Too bad that question was omitted. But if your kids ever ask, Maxcy recommended that parents who feel comfortable answering it give a pay range, talk about what goes into a salary and what the money pays for, and even discuss different forms of compensation and benefits.

And if you don’t want to go there, Maxcy said, this can still be a great opportunity to explain why you’re uncomfortable sharing the information.