When I was growing up, some of the most effective financial lessons I learned were the lessons that were personal to me. It was great hearing stories about money management, but the opportunity to experience something on a personal level had the most impact.
April is Youth Financial Wellness Month, and it represents an opportunity to share advice with the next generation of consumers and, on a deeper level, create opportunities to make financial wellness personal.
Expecting anyone, especially a child or young adult, to relate to a money experience from the past is challenging at best. We live in an “instant gratification” and an “instant learning” environment. If we can take this approach to financial wellness when it happens and make it an “on-the-spot” teachable moment, there is a much higher likelihood of it resonating.
Too often, we focus too broadly on concepts and expect children to understand what we mean.
How can we expect a child to understand concepts like credit and debit when we don’t take the time to explain it?
As a parent, taking the time to explain to kids that when you “charge it,” you need to either have money in your account to cover the charge immediately or eventually are responsible for paying it back, it can go a long way in helping them to understand the concept.
If you and a teenager are shopping, you can go a bit more in-depth, discussing how much you have available to spend because that’s what you have in your account. If something costs more than you have, you don’t buy it and you find something less expensive. If you’re using a credit card, inserting the caveat of, “I need to pay this purchase off when my bill is due,” can help keep things in context and set some good habits to model.
If you and a younger child are going to get ice cream, try saying you only have $10 on your debit card to spend. Take the time to review the menu and the associated prices and decide together what you can afford. Keep it simple and don’t try to inject multiple concepts into one transaction as it can be overwhelming. Making it personal can go a long way in helping a child or young adult better understand some relatively simple money management skills.
Some other ways to make financial wellness learning personal to your children include posting the budget on the refrigerator to remind everyone of the family’s goal; creating a family savings challenge, involving weekly competitions to see who can find the best price on groceries or other household needs; and involving older children in conversations about planning and saving for higher education.
Another component of building and maintaining strong financial wellness skills and habits is the role that research can have in making sound financial decisions.
Most major financial decisions that adults make (paying for college, owning a home, planning for retirement) require them to gather information through thorough research, use the information to consider trade-offs and act on that information in a way that serves their life goals. Helping young people build financial research skills means equipping them with the knowledge and skills they need to find and evaluate relevant financial information and helping them develop mental “guideposts” so they can recognize situations in which they should seek out additional information (case studies can encourage teenagers to check their budget and comparison shop before purchasing an expensive item).
Creating personal learning opportunities for kids and young adults may take more time, but it is time well spent.
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