Teen Money Management
Its vital that you teach your teen to manage money properly, just as its essential that you prepare your teen for college by teaching them good study habits. If you don't teach your teen how to deal with financial issues, you may be setting them up for failure when they're an adult.
If you haven't instilled financial fundamentals within your teens already, you better get started. A teen doesn't become financially literate overnight. It requires you to teach your child the fundamentals from a young age. A common way to do this is by opening a saving account for your child before they hit their tweens so that they can learn how important regular saving is. As your children get older start incorporating new "lessons". For example you can open a CD account, buy stocks, and building credit, are all things that anyone should know before entering the real world.
Though you may want to keep your child dedicating their time solely to school, instead of spending they're extra free time working, remember that knowing the value of hard earned money is part of their basic education as well. I've seen far too many cases when parents keep their child from getting a job even through all of high school. Once they are done with high school or college and are on their own, they find it very hard to control their spending.
While the internet offers a lot of free activities such as chat rooms and social networks for teens, it also subjects teens to more temptation to spend money more than ever. Not to mention the increasingly large amount of advertising we're subjected to in our current. This is why its more important than ever to teach your teen smart money management.
June/17/2008
