What does it take to raise money-savvy teens? It helps to start with money-savvy tweens and before that, money-savvy toddlers, but those are hard to come by.
If you have teens and haven’t taught them about money, Intervene now! I promise that teaching them how to handle money today means they won’t be hounding you for it indefinitely as young adults.
Don’t worry if you fear you’ve raised a bunch of piggy-bank raiders because you didn’t think to start money lessons earlier. I aimed to make 2 quick financial lessons for teens as a teaching easy-street cheat sheet for parents who want money-smart kids.
I can promise you that teaching your kids the art of delayed gratification will increase their life-long earning potential better than almost anything.
What does a lesson in delayed gratification look like in real life? Pay attention here if your teen has an “impulse buy” problem because it’s about to get solved!
Let’s say your teen has a certain monthly allowance or chore payment for buying things they like. You can propose a deal where you’ll double that amount the next month if your teen can put off spending anything until the next payday.
You know how teens tend to be pretty confident that they’d manage just fine on their own? You know how teens like to impress their friends? Let them have a stab at both through investing their own money.
After all, nothing humbles the proud quite like a trial with some errors. Here’s how it should go down:1 – Determine an amount of money your teen should take from their own savings/allowance to invest.
2 – You have a little bit of freedom with how you want to let your teen dabble in investing but you’ll be dealing with the logistics of it all so you get some say.