Most teenagers will blow through a wad of cash faster than you can hand it over to them.
The thought of saving money is typically the furthest thought from their mind. Since you are not made of money, it becomes evident that at some point they will simply have to learn to save the money that comes into their possession.
Learning to save money is essential in order for your teenagers to become financially responsible.
Here are four tips that will help your teens to start saving more effectively.
Show them the downsides of poverty
If you want to motivate your teens to view saving money as a serious part of their everyday lives, it helps to show them examples of people who ignored such a valuable lesson.
It may disturb your teens to learn that people today still live in unfavorable conditions as a result of not making the effort to save money early on in life. As they view examples of these conditions first hand, this will serve as motivation for why they should do better for themselves financially.
Saving money becomes an important step towards avoiding a poverty-stricken lifestyle.
Save in order to gain
Another way to teach your teens to save money is to show them how saving your money gives you increased purchasing power. This exercise in patience will show them that although it may take a long time to save up a considerable amount of money, the wait is worth the reward.
With more money being saved, this will eventually give your teens the realization of how to go about obtaining items they would not normally have the cash to purchase.
This in turn provides your teens with some sense of how savings will build over time.
Budget to control monetary flow
Another aspect of saving money comes from learning how to budget. Having to plan out ahead of time how much they should be spending to remain within budget helps your teens to understand the realistic limits of a dollar’s value.
As they learn to conserve money to meet budgetary constraints, they will find that how they spend money will impact how efficient their saving tends to be. They will also learn to save more money by identifying which spending habits need to be eliminated to optimize their savings potential.
According to ClearPointCreditCounselingSolutions.org, it is the budgeter, not the spender, who ends up tending to accumulate and save more money in a relationship.
Alternatives to cash
When your teens carry cash around everywhere, the tendency is to allow the cash to burn a hole through their pocket without any real sense of how fast the money is being wasted.
Teaching your teens to pay with a check instead will force them to become more mentally aware of how much money they possess.
It is important to make this process fun. One way is to allow them to order their own customized checks with their own personalized design from places like Checks SuperStore.
Writing out a check is also a bit more of a hassle than immediately paying with cash. The extra effort involved of having to write the check out may help to save money by putting an extra step into the purchasing process.
Saving money is typically not going to be as fun for your teens as spending, but this is still a necessary habit to develop. Learning how to save is part of what makes your teenagers grow to become financially successful adults.
The earlier you start them off on the right foot with a comprehensive savings plan, the more likely they will carry these habits into old age with them. This will give you the peace of mind to know that they will have enough money to potentially take care of you as well.
Image from Pixabay
Anica Oaks
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