Teaching Teens to Save Money and Be Financially Independent

Even if you’re fortunate to be able to provide your family with all their material needs, you still have to teach your children the value of money and the benefits of saving money.

As children grow up, their needs for material goods would also grow. So, it’s only right to teach them to save money.

But how do you teach your children to save money especially your teenage children?

First of all, as parents, you must instill in all your children that money doesn’t come from nothing. In order to obtain money, one needs to work. Something has to be given in order to get something else.

To show your children the value of money, as far as possible, when you make purchases in front of them, don’t use your credit card. Use cash. This way, they’ll see that money has to be given in order to obtain something.

If you use a credit card, there’s no physical evidence that money has been exchanged for goods and your children cannot understand the value of money.

Once they’ve understood the value of money, it’s easy for you to tell them about saving money. You must explain to them why they need to save money especially to your teens because as teens, given their age where they tend to question all your instructions you’ll need to give them a motivation before they’d do anything.

If your teens like dressing up, you might want her to set up a “clothes money” where she would put aside an amount out of her allowance to spend only on clothes. And if she likes to buy CDs, the same can be done too; setting up a “CD money”.

You can talk to your teens about budgeting. She must be made to understand that if she spends more than she gets, she’ll be in trouble but if she spends less, she’ll have money left over for future expenditure.

Teach them the amount they should spend and the amount they should save. For example, you might suggest that they save 10% of their allowance.

They may also have savings that are for long-term expenditures like saving for a car or for college and they may also have short-term saving like for purchasing an MP3 set or the latest cell phone.

Most importantly, when you teach your teens to save money, you must teach them budgeting and you must lead by example too.