Just this Thursday I read that nearly 250 students from a high school in Newark, NJ were to have a mentoring experience with 57 employees from the Verizon Leadership Development Program. These employees were to share their life experiences and discuss various topics with the students.
The topic that caught my attention was financial budgeting. My happy-go-lucky fourteen-year-old does not know a thing about creating a spending plan or living within a budget. And so I decided to do some research, and come up with three different ways to teach my teen about using a budget planner to live within her means:
  1. I decided to positively influence my daughter’s “money blueprint”

Our money blueprint is formed while we are very young, and it is influenced by parents, friends, authority figures, the media, and our culture. This conditioning teaches teenagers how to think and act in relation to money, and forms part of their money beliefs. With that in mind, instead of throwing out stock phrases like money doesn’t grow on trees when she asks for something, the new me will show her how to use the budgeting software programs available on Calendar Budget to see for herself whether or not we can afford it.

  1. I will teach my daughter the importance of saving and investing

In my research, I found that 45 percent of US high school students surveyed by Capital One Bank in June 2010 said that either they are not ready or are uncertain of how to manage their banking needs. On the other hand, 71 percent of respondents who said they speak to their parents “regularly” indicated that they either are “highly” or “very” well-informed about budgeting and personal finance. I won’t just talk to my daughter about personal finance: I’ll equip her with the budget manager available on the Calendar Budget website, so she can manage any income she receives from her allowance, summer jobs, etc.

  1. I will set a good example

I think parents should be a good example of financial responsibility, and involving teens in money management activities is only part of it. So I will budget, set long-term financial objectives, make prudent purchases, save, and invest because I want my children to see me living within my means and practicing solid money management. In fact, I’m going to start as soon as I’m done with this blog post by evaluating the family budget and making my daughter conscious of monthly bills.

My aim in writing this blog post is to drive parents to consider seriously the role of money in their children’s lives so that each teen in America can make a connection with financial budgeting. Do you have any ideas on how to encourage youth to develop good financial habits? Share them with us by leaving a comment today!