Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Teaching Children to Handle Money Wisely

I was never taught how to handle money.  Not really, or at least not that I can remember (sorry Mom and Dad).  I would be in tons of debt if it weren't for my Hubby and all the research he's done.  He's a planner.  I am not.  He budgets, I just follow his lead.

Kids often do not get training in how to handle money and we have seen the results of that.  Devastating results have occurred in our society.  And don't get me started on work ethic.

We certainly want a better financial upbringing for our children than either of us had.  We needed to put a plan into action.  Our children are 3, 5, 9, and 11.  We already had a summer chore chart (see link) in action for which, on completion, our children were paid.  This helped us to still have a somewhat clean house and a very FUN summer.

More importantly, our son who is 11 started making money in the neighborhood mowing lawns.  He has made well over $200 dollars doing this.  He is saving up for a tablet computer.  As soon as he started bringing home his money, we taught him to figure out the percentage he needed to save and the percentage he needed to give to church.  He put 30% aside for savings and 10% for church.  He can do whatever he wants with the other 60% (within reason- he's only 11).  We opened a savings account for him and we started dropping his 30% off to the bank.

Again, I believe there's a window of time (see link) in a child's life when this can be done easily and when it will be like PULLING teeth.  If you wait till their teens, it may be too late.  Because, "who do you think you are to tell me what to do with my own money?" would probably come out of their mouths all too easily.  And, our younger ones don't really "get it" yet.  So, for them we will wait a bit.

This savings plan will hopefully become so habitual that he will do this automatically as an adult.  Of course, there's a lot more that we need to teach him. But for now, this has been a good start.

HAPPY SAVING!!!  GET GOING WHILE YOU CAN.

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