Financing Your Life A Guide to Controlling Your Finances, Today
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Parenting is a tough job. Teaching kids to be kind, courageous, resourceful, dedicated and confident isn’t easy, but it’s exactly what good parents do. Teaching your children the importance of saving money and helping them get into the habit of putting money aside will help guarantee them a safe, secure, comfortable future. If you’re at a loss as to how to do this, here are some things you can do.
- Watch the archived presentation of the American Bankers Association “Teach Children to Save” course. Choose from webinars that help children learn about banks, saving, and needs versus wants.
- Play “Store” with them. If your children are young, getting a toy cash register and putting price tags on the foods, furniture and toys throughout your home can be a great way to help them start to understand both the value of money and of saving that money for higher-cost purchases. Keep the game going by giving your kids a fake money allowance each week so they get an idea of how their capacity to buy changes as they accumulate more money.
- Take your kids shopping with you and explain your purchasing decisions. Kids learn how to make decisions in part by watching their parents do it. Explain to your children that some items you may want are priced too high so you’ll have to save up for them. This will show them that saving money is a normal part of financial planning. You can also explain to them that by purchasing a cheaper product, it allows you more money to save.
- Give younger children a piggy bank. The first few weeks of adding change to the piggy bank, they’ll still be able to lift it and rattle the change around. But eventually it will grow heavy, which is a great way to help them understand how saved money adds up.
- Open a savings account for older children. In order to drive the lesson home, you can create a chart that you update each time your child makes a deposit so they can see a visual representation of their savings growth.
