Printable Play Money (Lots of Free Fake Money Templates)

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These free printable play money templates include pretend dollar bills and coins in regular and rainbow-colored designs. Use them for a pretend shop, counting practice, board games, or a classroom reward system.

Print the pages you need, cut out the money, and you are ready to play. The free PDF is available through the signup form below.

Younger kids can sort matching bills and count out small amounts. Older kids can practice adding prices, making change, and planning what to buy with a set budget.

And if you like these, we’ve got lots of other fun printables for kids, like our printable playing cards and printable dice.

The Printable Money Templates

The printable includes pretend dollar bills with values up to $100, plus coin designs. Choose the regular version or the rainbow-colored version to suit your activity.

Here are our two money template options to get you started:

Regular Money Templates: These dollar-inspired bills and coin cutouts have simplified illustrations for pretend play and counting activities.

Use the printed values to practice counting and comparing amounts. These are play-money designs, rather than a guide to recognizing the details of real banknotes.

Rainbow Colored Money Templates: These colorful bills and coins are a cheerful option for classroom shops, pretend restaurants, and homemade games.

You can also use them as substitute money in a board game, choosing the values your game needs.

Ideas for Using Printable Play Money

Here are a few ways to use your printable play money at home or in the classroom. Start with small whole-dollar amounts, then add more challenging calculations when your child is ready:

Money Math: Help children practice their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills by creating math problems using fake money.

For example, price a toy at $3 and let your child pay with a $5 bill. Ask them to count out $2 in change. Switch roles so they can practice being both the shopper and the cashier.

Money Bingo: Use blank bingo cards and add in various denominations of fake money, and call out amounts while kids place markers on the corresponding currency on their cards.

The first one to complete a row or column wins!

Grocery Store Role-Play: Set up a pretend grocery store with various items and price tags.

Children can take turns playing the role of cashier and customer, using the fake money to buy and sell items while practicing their counting and money handling skills.

You could also set up a play restaurant instead of grocery store for more pretend play.

Budgeting Game: Give children a fixed amount of play money and a list of items with prices. Ask them to plan a budget and decide which items they can afford to buy without exceeding their budget.

Money Scavenger Hunt: Hide play money around the house or classroom, and have children search for it.

Once they’ve found all the hidden currency, they can count their earnings and practice adding up the total amount.

Banking Role-Play: Set up a pretend bank where children can deposit and withdraw play money. Keep a simple written record of each transaction and work out the balance together.

Money Memory Game: Create pairs of matching fake dollars and lay them face down.

Kids can take turns flipping over two cards at a time, trying to find matches while testing their memory and recognition skills.

Teaching Financial Literacy: Use printable play money to help children learn about budgeting, saving, and spending through hands-on activities and games.

Currency Exchange: For an extra activity with older kids, you could introduce pretend exchange rates. You would need separate examples of other currencies; this printable set uses dollar and cent designs.

They can practice exchanging one currency for another using predetermined exchange rates.

Board Games: Incorporate the fake money printable into board games.

Reward Systems: Implement a reward system where children can earn printable money for completing tasks on their chore charts or exhibiting good behavior, then “spend” their earnings on rewards or privileges.

Keep each round short and let children take turns choosing prices or running the shop. You can reuse the same money for a different game next time.

Grab the Free Money Printables

Enter your first name and email address in the box below, and we’ll send the free printable play money PDF to your inbox.

These are for personal or classroom use only please. Not for commercial use. Thank you!

Printing Tips

Download the PDF from your email, then find the page numbers for the designs you want. Enter those numbers in the page-range field of your print settings to avoid printing the whole set.

Print one test page first and check that the bills and coins fit within the page margins. Use regular paper for folding and casual play, or cardstock for pieces that are easier to handle repeatedly.

Cut around each bill and coin. Adults can help with the smaller coin shapes. If you want to laminate the money, leave a small sealed border when trimming it.

Sort the cutouts by value and store them in labeled envelopes or a small box. This makes it easier to set up the next game and count everything back in afterward.

Pick a few pages, set up a little shop, and let the kids take turns at the checkout!