You’ll require to work to earn money! Well, your parents must have phrases alluding to the difficulties you may have to ensure to accumulate wealth in the long run. As a parent, you may have told your children the hard truth about money numerous times. However, you shouldn’t stop there!
Every parent wants their children to become great managers of resources. However, you should appreciate that this is a skill that should be inculcated into these children at their early stages of life. You should introduce financial lessons when they are young and they’ll carry the tips they acquire into their adulthood. Here are five guidelines that you should consider to boost your effort of inculcating financial discipline into your children.
- The Earlier the Better
Do not wait until your children transit to adulthood for you to introduce financial lessons. Instead, teach them about money as soon as they can count! Teach them the importance of every coin they come across. To make it memorable, ensure that you introduce money games regularly which will ensure that they have fun as they learn. At this stage, you may even introduce piggy banks to them. Let them start valuing every coin they have and teach them the need to save money!
- Let them Differentiate Needs from Wants
This lesson is critical in ensuring that your children use their money prudently. You should candidly teach them the differences between needs and wants. Start with the examples that they can easily understand to make it easy for them to relate with the lesson. For example, you may use illustrations such as food and video games. Let them understand how to prioritize in cases of minimal resources and competing needs. The lessons obtained here will directly influence your children’s spending habits in the future.
- Teach them the Importance of Setting Goals
If you want your children to have financial discipline, then you should ensure that you show them how fundamental it is to have savings. You should teach them to set monetary goals in terms of how much money they need to save within a certain period. Let them learn to contain their appetite for goods. You’ll achieve this by letting them understand that the needs will always be there and that they can delay their gratification. Also, show them the need for using saving devices to minimize fuel usage, outside eateries, and other expenses. You may introduce them to items such as vacuum sealer for freezing food to save on foods cost!
- Give Allowances in Ones
Introduce your children to save before use technique. Let them appreciate that savings is not optional but rather should be among the first activities after receiving the allowance. To aid this, ensure that you pay their allowances in denominations that encourage savings. For example, give five-$1 than a $5 dollar note. This way, they can take the one dollar and keep it in their piggy bank!
- Teach Budgeting Using Shopping Trips
Go to the grocery or the supermarket to teach your children how to shop using a budget. Show them how to take advantages of promotions and coupons to save!
- Apps that Will Teach Your Children about Money
You should embrace every opportunity that arises to teach your children about finance management. With the current technological developments, you can be sure that using digital apps to teach about saving will have an incredible impact on your children’s financial discipline. Here are some apps you may consider:
Savings Spree. $5.99
This app is ideal for children above 7 years. It will teach your children crucial concepts on saving, investing, spending, and donating. It hosts players in a game show with the kid required to read through financial concepts for six rounds the game is on. On top of having fun, your kids will learn investment tips, both for long-term and short-term purposes.
Kids Money. Free
This app is ideal for children above 5 years. It allows the children to input the price of the item they are saving for after which it calculates how much the kid need to save and for how long. You can use it during shopping to show your children that items are not just bought but requires proper planning before buying.
Learning Gems-My Piggy Bank Lite. Free
This app is designed for children in the preschool through to 1st grade. It has two levels of play or 16 levels in the full version. Voice overs make it easy for children who cannot read to apply.
Allowance and Chores Bot. $2.99
Ideal for use by children of all ages. It will help you to track how your children are performing on their chores. Also, it enables you to set up daily, weekly, and monthly allowances for them. It enables them to see how much they have earned, used, and saved. They can identify chores, do them and watch the growth of their savings! As such, it inculcates the sense of responsibility in them.
