Thursday, January 8, 2009

How To Get Teens Talking About Personal Finance

By Jenni Snook

This article has been written to teach people how to get teens interested in personal finance. Nevertheless, before beginning this article, it's important that you know that a lot of patience will be needed as well as 30 minutes of your time on a weekly basis.

The first step in discussing personal finance for teens is to get their attention, the best way for you to teach your teenager anything, is to allow them to do whatever it is that you are attempting to teach them. You should probably also consider obtaining a pre-paid debit card for your teen or a cheque account. You can also get them a credit card but keep the limit at a very low level.

The second step in discussing personal finance for teens is to explain the fact that money doesn't grow on trees and that you are truly taking a substantial risk by even trusting them with this type of responsibility. You should make it clear that there could be serious consequences if they're not responsible financially.

The third step should involve you explaining all the mathematics involved in maintaining an account to your teen and seeing how this can work. If your teen is able to avoid financial problems, they you should congratulate yourself for a good job. On the other hand, if they encounter financial problems, you should take the time to talk to your teen and explain why experienced problems.

If this was all the result of an unfortunate mistake, a one-off thing or a situation where you have forgotten to transfer the allowance, then you should verify the problem and make sure it doesn't occur again. You should continue explaining the situation again and again if accounting problems persist.

The next step involves explaining to your teen that they must keep up with their account and keep track of their expenses via the Internet. With the Internet today, you can look at each transactions literally minutes after they've been realised.

The fifth step should then involve rewarding your teen if they have made good progress with their personal finance. It's very useful for your teen to know how to manage money, so you should continue teaching your teen different finance topics on a monthly basis.

If you're lucky, your local bank may be able to set up a debit card for free as well as transfer pre-determined amounts of money on chosen dates. Make the most of the electronic banking system and any free services the bank may offer.

Also be sure to keep the credit or debit account at a really low balance, because teenagers have a tendency to misplace things, so you really don't want someone spending all of your hard-earned cash attempting an experiment on your teenager's personal finance. - 15224

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