What would money mean to an alien visiting Earth?

Imagine an alien has landed on your doorstep, and you need to teach them about how money works on Earth. The alien only understands basic English and doesn’t know the first thing about spending money or where it comes from. 

If this alien followed you for a few days, what questions would it ask about how you make payments in store? What would you need to explain about how you pay for your daily essentials? The alien wouldn’t see you pay for things like your electricity, water bill, rent or mortgage, so how would you talk about that with them?

It might sound silly, but using this roleplaying activity can help you be more creative with how you talk about money at home.

The more you think about what the alien might see, the more questions come to mind. 

If you think about how you make payments at the shops, it isn’t only with coins and notes; the alien might see you tap your card, phone or watch at the till. How would the alien know that money is leaving your account unless you told them that? Or how it got there to begin with?

When you get money out at a cash machine, you’d need to tell them where it came from, that it wasn’t free. Similarly, suppose the alien doesn’t know about the value of currency. In that case, they might see you hand over one bit of money, and get back some food and even more bits of money (your change). It looks like money is everywhere on Earth!

Watching TV or adverts could be very confusing to the alien. Think about what they would ask about what they saw. 

If the alien saw people working, would they know they were being paid?

However, sometimes it can be helpful to think about them like they are from another planet. You can use this activity to help remind yourself when you might need to pause and explain things to your children. 

When you order things online, to a little alien or a child, it looks like the things you paid for are turning up out of the blue. To them, the cash machine and shops give out free money, and you always say no to buying the things they want, but yes to the things you want. 

You don’t need to manage money perfectly yourself to give your child a good understanding about how spending and saving works. Simple conversations about money and doing basic things at home will teach children a lot about what they need to know to manage their money well now and as they grow into adults.