Raising Your Child to be Financially Mature | Part 8
Jul 27
Teaching Budgeting
Teaching our children to be financially responsible is more than just teaching them to save, it is also teaching them how to budget. As our children get older one of the ways we can prepare them for adulthood is by training them to be organized financially. This will require a few things of us as parents. We will need to be organized ourselves so that we will know how much they need in order to pay for their own overhead, such as toiletries, ect. The next thing is to help our child have a system in order to budget this money. There are many systems out there that can be helpful, envelopes or a binder with pockets can be used. The next step is to allow them to practice this training. Just as with teaching them to save it is our job to get out of the way and allow them to make their own decisions. As with anything practiced it won’t be perfect right away, we must allow them to fail in order to learn the lesson and do better next time. Keep in mind that it will be much easier on our kids to practice and fail at budgeting now rather than in adulthood.
Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on teaching your child how to budget.
Raising Your Child to be Financially Mature | Part 7
Jul 26
Chores and Allowance
Allowance and chores are both a great opportunity to teach your children what it means to be responsible within the family unit. If we don’t attach a child’s weekly chores to their allowance we are teaching them that there are things that you do to simply contribute to the family. As soon as a child is old enough they can begin with simple chores such as picking up their room and making their bed. As they get older family chores can be slowly added.
One of the reasons to give children chores, such as taking care of their own bedroom, is to teach them responsibility and time management. It is also good to continue to teach them life skills as they get older because we will not always be there to clean up behind them. It is also a valuable lesson to teach that chores are done around the house simply to contribute to the family. Adults don’t get “paid” to make their bed in the morning or do the dishes. As we have been discussing over the past week, allowance should also be treated as an important training tool for teaching responsibility as well.
Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on teaching your child responsibility through allowance and chores.
Raising Your Child to be Financially Mature | Part 6
Jul 25
Encouraging Good Stewardship
Is it truly more blessed to give than receive? For children this may be a hard lesson to get across if we their parents don’t live like we believe it. Today we are going to talk about the concept of good stewardship. Good stewardship is not just learning to be good with money it takes this a step farther. It means learning to be Godly with our money.
The first lesson in stewardship, tithing, is easy to teach your child using their allowance. Letting your child put aside some of their own money to give back to God on Sunday is very important. We must use this experience to communicate with our children the very essence of stewardship. This is the fact that God as Creator owns it all and we are merely managers of what He has given us. If we can continually remind our children, and ourselves, of this concept it helps us not only keep an attitude of gratitude but also of generosity. As we give our children more and more opportunities to be generous with others they will begin to learn that it is truly more blessed to give then receive.
Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on teaching your child stewardship.
Raising Your Child to be Financially Mature | Part 5
Jul 22
Teaching My Children to Save
We talked yesterday about allowing your children to practice decision making with their own money. How do you allow them to fail while instilling positive habits?
With the teens in the residential program at Sheridan House every decision they make either has a reward or a consequence attached. They begin to create positive habits because the rewards begin to act as an incentive. During our summer program we teach them good money habits using fake Sheridan House money called Mazumas. There are many opportunities for the kids to spend their Mazumas all summer. At the end of the summer we have an auction where the teens can spend their remaining Mazumas. Those who saved Mazumas walk out of the auction with some awesome things. It is a very black and white lesson for these kids on the value of saving.
How do we instill something like this in our homes? We can make an incentive for saving. One idea is to set aside two different times a year that you will match 50 percent or even penny for penny what your children save. The first can be before Christmas so your child can actually spend his or her money on presents. The other can be before family vacation that way they will have spending money. Get creative on how to reward your child for making positive financial decisions!
Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on training your children to save.
Raising Your Child to be Financially Mature | Part 4
Jul 21
Allowing My Children to Experience Money Management
The third step in training your children for financial responsibility is experience. They have to be allowed to practice as children with small amounts of money so that they can learn valuable lessons about money early. Their first experiences in spending and saving should not be after they have gotten their first jobs. If this is the case we have not set them up for success.
As parents this is one of the areas that we can step back and allow them to practice small financial decisions with their allowance. We must be prepared, through this time of practice, for our own emotions. When our child has spent all of their money and is looking to us to purchase something for them, we cannot give in to guilt. We must allow them to make the choice and possibly make a poor choice in this area. They will not learn the lesson, however, if we step in and rescue them. There may be some painful moments for our child as they learn the value of saving and not spending all of their money immediately. We have to let them learn these lessons as children and they must learn them before they are on their own making major financial decisions that can affect their future!!
Listen to today’s podcast for more insight on training your child for financial responsibility through experience.
