Discover how to teach kids about home loans with the LEGO Equity Build! Turn complex bonds into a fun game and use our Tax Time resource to master home ownership
Most mini millionaires live in a home.
But we can almost guarantee they’ve never given it much thought beyond: “This is the place where I live with my family and pets, play with my toys, and go to sleep at night…”
For most people, a home is the single biggest purchase a person can ever make in their life.
And while some people rent the homes they live in, and some may purchase their homes outright, most homeowners have to take out a home loan in order to purchase their homes.
Since it’s such a big expense, it’s something well worth talking to your mini millionaire about as early as possible.
The bank is not your fairy godmother.
A home loan isn't free money.
It’s a formal partnership between the homeowners and the bank. To own a home, you must prove you are a reliable partner by showing the bank you can manage small amounts of money today so they trust you with big amounts tomorrow.
When you apply for a home loan, the bank looks at your creditworthiness, your income and expenses, and how much money you are able to put down as a deposit. You then repay an amount over 20 or 30 years, in order to afford your new home.
Teaching kids that a home loan is a tool for building wealth, rather than just an account to be paid each month, shifts their perspective from being a debtor to being an owner-in-training.
The Takeaway: Trust is the currency of the financial world, so it helps to earn it early.
Don't Forget The Interest.
A few weeks ago, we spoke about the Family Bank.
In a nutshell, if your mini millionaire borrows R20 for a small treat today, they owe you R22 by next week Friday.
This simple habit makes the invisible concept of interest very real.
By experiencing the interest on borrowed money, kids learn to calculate the total cost of an item, not just the price on the box or on the shelf.
They quickly realise that while loans provide instant gratification, they always come with a price tag that shrinks their future buying power.
The Takeaway: Before you borrow, always ask: "Is the right now worth the extra repayment next week?
Buy back your home with LEGO.
Grab a stack of LEGO to build a small house.
Start with 80% red bricks (the bank’s share) and 20% blue bricks (the child’s share).
Every time they complete a chore or make a payment, swap one red brick for a blue one. This visualises the process of slowly buying back your home from the bank.
It turns a complex 30-year financial contract into a tangible game of stacking bricks toward 100% freedom.
The Takeaway: Every payment is a step toward fully owning your home, one brick at a time.
This week’s free downloadable resource is called Tax Time resource.
While a home loan helps you buy the actual property and structure on it, being a homeowner comes with hidden costs like rates and taxes. It’s the things everyone needs to chip in for the things that just make a neighbourhood work, like clean water, streetlights, and trash collection.
Similarly, owning a home is about more than just the bond; it’s about the responsibility of keeping the whole community (i.e. everyone in the house) running, by ensuring our home just works. Things like water, electricity, and even the WiFi.
So in this week’s resource, we’re teaching mini millionaires about contributing to a Services Jar, which goes towards ensuring our home runs smoothly, simulating the added costs of owning a home over and above the bond for the home loan.
