This is a guest post by Sam Peters
Many people in the world today have financial problems and much of it stems from not learning how to handle money early enough in life. Those who are broke now, probably learned what they know about money from the way their parents handled money. This creates a never-ending cycle of struggling to get by financially. If you want your kids to live a comfortable lifestyle financially, you need to teach them early on how to handle money.
Strong Financial Foundation
People do not inherently understand how to handle money. This is a skill that must be taught and learned. As a parent, it’s your job to teach your kids about financial matters. You can’t simply leave it up to the schools or to someone else. While most kids learn plenty of economic theory in school, they don’t actually learn how to handle money on a personal level. Most people go through the school systems and end up not knowing how to make money or keep it. It’s up to you to take the responsibility for your children and teach them how to deal with money.
Letting Them Handle Money
When it comes to teaching your kids about money, is typically a good idea to let them learn firsthand. This means that you have to allow them to handle some money at some point. Instead of handing them a certain amount of cash, you may want to consider using a tool such as a Green Dot prepaid card.
With this type of card, you can load a certain amount of cash on to a card that they can use just like a credit or debit card. The nice thing about this type of card is that once the cash has been spent, you cannot rack up any more charges on the card. This means that you don’t have to worry about any debt issues. Using this type of card shows your children that money is limited and how they can only spend a certain amount before it runs out.
Considerations
Once children see how money works, you need to teach them about saving some of what they earn. If they have some kind of job or earn money by doing chores around the house, you can show them the power of saving a percentage of their own income. After a while, they will have some cash saved up and have the habit of saving developed for the future.
Kids need to learn the importance of money, as well as how to handle it, at a young age. Learning responsible money management skills at a young age will only help your kids continue positive spending and saving practices in the future which will help them avoid becoming a debt ridden statistic.
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