Sunday, December 21, 2008

Teaching Your Kids Simple Budgeting

By Alix Montoya

If you're running out of ideas on how to spend quality time with your children then you might be interested to know that spending time doesn't always mean a trip to the mall or anything special. It can be something that you can teach them like how to make use of their money properly. In fact, letting them join in and put their two cents in, literally and figuratively, on the family budget is a great way to make them feel more involved.

If you want your kids to appreciate money more, you can try to teach them how to save up. If you can convince your kids to save a portion of their allowance, say, in one week or one month, there are a lot of things that they can spend their money wisely on. They can also have more time to decide what they really want to buy with their saved up money and this makes them a better consumer.

Having a budget is very vital. It keeps you from spending too much on something that's not important and lets you spend enough on things that are important. If your kids can learn how useful this is, they are going to start being wise consumers and waste less and less money. This is good since you can actually teach them how to keep everything within their allowance, while saving some for the whole family.

If you want, you can also teach your kids how to put aside some money in a budget of his or her very own. This is probably the best way to teach responsibility to your kids as it lets them see exactly how much they spend and how much they need to lessen. It also allows them to set aside for things that they might need in the future.

When your kid is old enough, one of the other things that you can suggest is to have them earn their money. Give them household responsibilities that they can do for cash. Or if they're broad-minded, have them start their very own business like a lemonade stand. It teaches them the fruits of hard work and they can better appreciate money they know they labored for.

If your kids can learn all the good things that money brings, you can also teach them to become more responsible adults in the future. You should be careful never to overindulge as this might bring about a spending spree from your kids which, in light of the recent crises, you surely do not want happening.

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