Teaching Teens About Money

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1. Stick to your guns. Tell them if they want something, they have to EARN it, not LEECH off you and/or their grandparents. When I was growing up, I asked my dad about driving the family car. His answer: "You want to drive? You have to pay for the insurance. And if you can afford the insurance, you can afford to buy your own car." Guess who won. It wasn't me.
   
   
2. You then have to teach them that WORK/LABOR + TIME = MONEY! No money, no allowance without commensurate labor and responsibilities. If they want lunch money, tell them it's either brown bagging it or they have to earn it themselves.
   
   
3. Point out to them that child labor laws only refer to working for wages in a commercial enterprise under a certain age. This has ZERO BEARING on WORKING AT HOME! Child labor laws don't apply at home.
   
   
4. Ask them whether they're adults or children. Little children often whine and beg and wheedle for money. Only infants have to be fed. And only "babies," incapable of feeding themselves, continue to be spoonfed. Ask them, "Are you money babies?"
   
   
5. Next, teach them about the working world. Introduce them to friends, relatives, and acquaintances and get them talking about making a living. It's obvious that they have no contact with that world, and so they are in complete ignorance of what it's really like! Teach them how to make money.
   
   
6. Take them through the entire process of renting an apartment, buying a house, buying a car, paying bills, how to start and run a business, the costs of weddings, the cost of raising children, and the costs of going to college. Give them the real inside details. Walk them through it. Make them do the math. Give them a cash journal and have them track their finances for a month.
   
   
7. Teach them about GOAL SETTING and PLANNING, including long-term (such as ten years ahead)! Get them to thinking about their future. And give them the tools to get to that future. Most of all, talk with them about money. After all, you as parents already know how important a part of life it is. This is stuff they won't get in school, and you owe it to them as part of their upbringing to teach them about it because if you don't, they'll have to learn it all the hard way, including all the mistakes that would otherwise be unnecessary. Teach them your frugal values. Make it a competition to see who can find the best deals on stuff they have to have. And the winner keeps the difference in pocket money.

Charles M. Armstrong III is a professional writer and composer who resides with his Russian wife, Olga, in Ashland, Oregon. He is a retired concert classical and flamenco guitarist, an infamous punster, notorious limerick writer, and even worse joke teller! He's also of Scottish ancestry, which accounts for his "interest" in frugal living. copyright 1998 Charles M. Armstrong III

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