Teens and Money!

I spent a lot of time with my oldest son, teaching him how to count, add, subtract and sometimes multiply money!! I also helped him get the skills to and apply for jobs as a lifeguard and a soccer ref! But the really hard part of teaching your kids about money is having them keep hold of it and keep track of it after they get some!! So with experience and 20/20 hindsight, here are my suggestions for teaching teens about money.

1. Talk to your kids about money! Give them a realistic view of how much the family brings in and how much it takes to keep the household afloat!

2. Give them an opportunity to earn their own money and make them pay for things they want. With my little kids this may be candy or little stickers and toys. With my teens it usually started with buying their own clothes and then the more expensive toys like video games etc.

3. Don’t let them have access to your credit cards. I let my oldest use my card to keep minutes on his cell phone so that I could call him in case of an emergency. I don’t think that should cost me $70 a month so that he can get texts from all of his friends. I recently cut off the credit card funds and took the money from his bank account to cover the costs.

4. Make sure you have access to the teen bank account. That way you can track their spending and earnings on line. Trust but verify.

5. Make sure they can’t take money out without your authorization. When I was a girl my grandma opened my account and I put money in it regularly until I was 18. But I could not take any of it out. When I finally turned 18 I had a lot of money in there and I was very glad I had followed my grandmother’s wisdom.

6. Just say no to credit card offers!

7. Insist on savings and tithing.

8. Let your child live with the consequences. The consequence of no access to my credit card means that if Calvin runs out of minutes and he has no money, he just won’t be able to use his cell phone for a while until he gets some money! The same holds true for gas, clothing and other things. This encourages planning and saving.

9. On the other hand, watch out for the child that pinches every penny until it bleeds and is obsessively working every small job he can get his hand on for cash. There is a time for everything. Childhood is not the time for this. Lord knows that day comes soon enough!

10. Most of all, it is important to set a good financial example for your kids. Mr. Pete and I have made enough of our own mistakes and we openly discuss them with our kids. However, they also see that we try to live within our means, and that you don’t have to have a lot of money to live a happy and rich life. Perhaps that is the most important lesson of all!

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