Teaching Today's Teens Financial Responsibility
CBN.com--While experts acknowledge that kids are not fluent in the language of managing money, most children and adolescents would welcome the opportunity to make finances their mother tongue.
From $40 backpacks to designer lunch boxes to the $24 three-ring binder, today's youth market is hot.
"Learning the value of money, how to invest and manage it wisely, is still one of the most important lessons we teach our children," says Jane Lee, Director of Kids, Parents Money at American Express.
But critics wonder if kids are learning those important lessons as they spend billions of dollars.
According to Teenage Research Unlimited, last year America's 31 million teens spent $153 billion, up a significant 8.5 percent from 1998.
As aggressive television advertising targets the pockets of American kids, parents and pre-teens spend perhaps $100 billion more on youth-related items.
Lutheran Brotherhood estimates suggest the average 7-year-old views 20,000 commercials in just one year.
Facing a hostile environment, parents like Livo and Laurie Sitterding say they're trying to teach their kids monetary wisdom, having first educated themselves on Christian financial concepts to avoid the fate of friends who never learned to save and who learned the dangers of credit card spending too late.
Laurie says, for her, money management lessons came early.
"I really interacted with money while I was still at home under my dad's care and he could sort of monitored how I did it," she says.
And they find their Heavenly Father is teaching and monitoring their whole family about finances.
"Sometimes He provides in very real ways, says Laurie. When the budget doesn't allow for clothing money for them, then the clothes come, even if the money doesn't come, so it's really been a blessing to just think of all of life in that way."
And following God's lead, Livo takes time not only going over money basics, but spending that other limited asset time, family time.
The Sitterdings say this sends a message that relationships are more important than mere money. And one way they express their relationship to God is through use of a tithing bank with sections for home, store and church.
Other families like the Johns started teaching their two girls how to save and give at age 3 by showing them how to tithe their money.
"The Lord said that we should give 10 percent of our offering to Him That's why I give a dime every time, says daughter Rebecca Johns.
The Johns' teen-age daughter Teresa learned to add cash to her allowance by baby-sitting. She keeps records in one of her mom's discarded checkbooks, saving the money for later use.
Teen surveys suggest what Teresa has been learning may find a ready response in those who've never heard about using money wisely.
In fact, fully two-thirds of students say they'd like to know more about handling money, according to the American Savings Education Council.
The Sitterdings suggest responding to that natural curiosity.
"They ask about everything and a lot of it relates to money and God's providence for us and how He's providing for us. And we try to teach them He's doing all things well," says Laurie.
In the next ten years, the number of teen-agers will grow to 35 million. Experts expect their monetary power to grow rapidly as well.
| This article originally appeared in November 2000 on CBN.com and has been reprinted with permission. |
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