-
Have You Taught Your Teens the Value of Money
What is it about teens? They often think their parents are made of money. Of course, this isn’t a new problem parents face. However, teaching kids about money can help them learn where money comes from and how to handle it properly.
If you’re successful at teaching kids about money while they’re young, they’ll be less likely to have money problems in the future. At least that’s your hope as a parent – for your children to grow up and avoid the mistakes you may have made, whether financial or not.
You may want to consider giving your teen an allowance if you haven’t already done so. This will help them learn about money. Their allowance doesn’t have to be associated with doing chores, since chores are something that everyone in the family does to help make the family home run smoothly.
Sit down as a family and decide how much of an allowance your teen should get and what you expect them to learn about money. If they’re old enough to get a part-time job, allowing them to do that will give them their own money, but you’ll still want to give them help with what to do with it.
Help them open a savings and a checking account. This will give them a way to save some of the money they make and a way to track their spending. If they want a particular brand of shoes or jeans that you refuse to buy because of how expensive they are, suggest they save up for that item. Talk about a way to learn how to value money! If they want that item badly enough, they’ll understand how long it takes them to work to buy it. They may find that they don’t want the item after all.
Use the checking account to help your teen learn the importance of balancing their checkbook each month. If this is a skill you’re lacking in, perhaps the two of you can go to the bank and ask someone to show you both how to do that to keep from spending more than you have.
To help your teen realize the value of money, show them how to search for bargains. You can do this by comparison shopping or by going to yard sales, thrift stores, and consignment stores. Quite often you can buy name brand items for much less than in a traditional store.
Do everything you can to keep your teen from opening a credit card account. Credit can play an important role in your teen’s financial future, but it’s better for them to avoid it until they are an adult and have a full-time job so they can pay their bills.
Most importantly, if they make a mistake with their money by overdrawing their checking account, don’t rush to bail them out. They need to learn that spending more money than they have is not something they want to do. Let them face going to the bank to pay the overdraft fees. This is one way of teaching teens the value of money – even though the lesson isn’t an easy way to learn what not to do, it will be a lesson they’ll never forget.
Additional Resources:
The Teen Girl’s Gotta-Have-It Guide to Money: Getting Smart About Making It, Saving It, and Spending It! (Teen Girl’s Gotta-Have-It Guides)Play The Real-Life Money Game With Your Teen
Complete Idiot’s Guide to Money for Teens
Comments
One Response to “Have You Taught Your Teens the Value of Money”
Got something to say?
SO important to teach kids, and especially teens, to manage their finances. It’s something I’m glad I was taught growing up because I have applied it during so many different periods of time in my life in order to stay a fiscally responsible individual.
-Sharon