Money Skills for Kids

Lesson 4: High School Children & Teenagers And Money

Middle-school-aged children eventually grow into high-school students, and the roller coaster of emotions, intellectual growth, and social pitfalls gets faster, steeper, and harder to predict. Children in high school are, generally, becoming more irritable, and change from being cheerful one minute to being downcast, unhappy, and depressed the next. This is normal. The children are transitioning from the relatively sheltered life of no worries and responsibilities, to the realization that in a few short years they, too, will become part of the world that mom and dad currently inhabit, and with that world comes a load of fears, failures, and decisions with far-reaching consequences.

This mixture of childlike innocence and uncooperative stubbornness makes it hard to parent them, but this is the time they need parents the most! Additionally, some parents throw up their hands in despair and forego the teachings about money for the sake of curricular and extra curricular achievements. This is a grave mistake, as now is the time that peer pressure will double, and children must continue to receive consistent training in the managing of finances.

High school children, and the young adults they turn into, worry a great deal about their peer relationships, how they are viewed within their group and thus engage in power plays, unwise decisions, and sometimes change their physical appearance to a point that many a mother has been known to wring her hands in panic and frustration. No matter what changes your teenager goes through, this is neither the time nor the place to berate her/him for her/his choices, or, which is even worse, compare her/him unfavorably to the model teen down the street. Instead, continue to be an example, to be available, and to transition into the role of being a friend. Very soon the teenager will leave home and must be capable of standing on her/his own two feet, and thus her/his personal leadership abilities as well as team-building skills must have been developed. In addition, this will be the test of your training on finances...

Earning an income while keeping up the grades (younger set)

Younger children will at this point begin to establish “wants” that will exceed both their allowances as well as their abilities for patient saving. While it was fine to ask younger children to save up for the latest toy or candy of their choice, considering it only took a couple of weeks, older children’s “wants” may easily reach the hundreds of dollar mark and asking them to save for one year for a snowboard is not a good idea. Instead, this is the perfect time for the next set of advanced lessons: working in order to earn money.

To this end, children should graduate from the four-bank system to a paper based budgeting system. A sample budget could be as follows:

MY MONEY BUDGET for the week of (Date)
..................................Planned:.................Spent:
Income
Allowance: __________
Expenses:
School lunches......__________........__________
School supplies.....__________........__________
Hobbies...................__________........__________
Charity......................__________........__________
Other.........................__________........__________
Savings....................__________........__________
Total.......................$__________.......$__________

Thus far, if you have followed the advice laid out in the previous lesson on not paying for chores, the allowance has been a weekly portion handed out without strings attached. Since your child now wishes for larger and more costly items, the allowance must be augmented. I strongly caution against handing money over every time your child desires a new blouse or a new skateboard. Doing so will undermine the money management skills you have thus far sought to teach her/him. Instead, now is the time to help your child determine what s/he could do to earn money.

For example, is there a chore that you currently do that you would be willing to pay your child to do? Maybe the dishes after the family reunion, or maybe the shelves in the kitchen need to be cleaned out, washed, have new shelving paper applied, and everything needs to be put back? Maybe you just detest cleaning the litter box? All these chores, which do not exactly fall under the umbrella of doing things for the household in the strict sense of being a helpful member of the family, may be worth a few dollars to you. Additionally, if you currently employ a gardener who mows your lawn, you may explain to your child that it s/he takes on this chore, you will pay her/him what you used to pay the gardener. As with any job, before your allow your child to enthusiastically embark on this voyage, sit down together and be very clear about the expectations you have with regards to duration, frequency, and quality of performance, as well as the amount of money you will pay, when it will be paid, and how often. Additionally, this is the time to explain that if doing these jobs takes away from your child’s time and attention to her/his homework, and her/his grades slide, the jobs will be cancelled and no additional money will be earned.

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