These days, with so many families and friends experiencing financial difficulties, money management skills are more of a topic than in the past. Sadly, our schools are not doing of job of teaching teens these skills at a formative time in their lives when ideas about earning, spending, saving and investing should be learned. I have had teens in therapy who did not know how to use a checkbook and could not understand their parents’ worry about saving for a rainy day.
Here are a few on-line sites that you can look at, and then depending upon your interests and intentions, recommend to your teen.
- It All Adds Up (www.italladdsup.org ) has interactive games and quizes to teach personal finance.
- Young Money (www.youngmoney.com ) has both an on-line and a print version with articles on personal finance aimed at young adults.
- Girl Scouts Money Smarts (www.girlscouts.org/moneysmarts/default.htm ) is organized to teach girls financial literacy.
I suggest you start now with your teen. Have discussions about financial literacy that are useful, informative and non-threatening. Above all, try not to let the only time you raise an issue about finances be when you are rebuking your teen about not being thrifty or thoughtful about spending. Learning what NOT to do is important, but even more helpful is learning what is the most financially smart thing to do, and how to know the difference.
