Today on MoneyWatch
Is Your Credit Card Safe Now?
After a massive hacker attack on Citigroup's credit cards unit, here's how you can protect yourself.
results for:
Kids and Money
Featured Blogs: Jill on Money, Money for Life, Cars and Money, The Daily Money, Real-Time Money, Make the Most of Your Money, You're So Money
How can I teach my child to spend wisely?
Here are some ideas for you to play with:
Treat the supermarket as a school. Give the kids a grocery cart, a list, and $30, and see how far they can make their money stretch. Send them searching the aisles for goods that you have cents-off coupons for. Ask them to pick the best buys.
Don’t lie to your kids. Make a clear distinction between what you can’t afford and what you don’t think is worth paying for. If they still want it, let them save for it. If it violates your principles, just say no.
By their midteens, start giving your kids a sense of what life is like by having them pay the family bills for two or three months. Sit down together with the bills and show them how to write checks to pay for the family’s utilities, mortgage, rent, phone, water, doctors, and credit cards. They’ll find it instructive to see how fast the bank balance drops. They’ll also start getting a better idea of how much it costs to live.
Don’t shell out for practically everything your kids want or need. That teaches them nothing except dependency, not to mention the fine art of wheedling. They need to make choices within budget limits to learn adult skills. If they want more than their allowance can buy, they should find a part-time job. Children will spend unlimited amounts of their parents’ money, given a chance. They’re much more careful with their own.
Use cash. Don’t put kids under 16 on your credit cards as authorized users or provide them with prepaid debit cards. They need to learn how to allocate real dollars before they can transfer those skills to plastic. Consider plastic after age 16, to introduce them to credit while their spending is still under your supervision.
Excerpted from Making the Most of Your Money Now by Jane Bryant Quinn
Copyright 1991, 1997, 2009, by Berrybrook Publishing, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc
Buy the BookEditor's Pick
-
Financial Literacy: What Your Kids Need to Know
-
Money Skills for Your Kids: Ages 4 to 9
-
Money Skills for Your Kids: Ages 10 to 14
-
Money Skills for Your Kids: Ages 15 and Up
-
Money Stressed? Your Kids Are Too
-
Bad Financial News: How to Tell Your Kids
-
Money Camp for Kids
-
Beyond Piggy Banks: A Parents' Guide
-
What Kids Don't Know About Money
-
Money Smart Kids: Allowances
Why give kids allowances? What should it cover? When should you start and how much should you give them? These answers and more from MoneyWatch special contributor Ray Martin.
-
5 tips on beating the heat at home with kids
NEW YORK (AP) — If high gas prices have you rethinking your summer adventures and recalculating the cost of traveling to a more refreshing climate, you may need to change focus to find free or low-cost ways to have a ball at home.You don't want to spend more on keeping cool and busy at home...
-
Go the bleep to sleep, dad writes in best-seller
NEW YORK (AP) — Playing dress up or running around the park, kids can be so darn cute. Until it's 3 a.m. and they won't go the (bleep) to sleep.The F-bomb plea on the minds of every parent at one point or another is the title of a buzz magnet of a book parody written in kid-friendly rhyme....
-
Empty summer in the city for kids hit by cutbacks
NEW YORK (AP) — A rising number of children can look forward to excruciatingly boring school breaks this year as budget crises in places such as New York, Washington, D.C., Houston and Detroit rob them of the activities and programs that have long defined summer in the city for urban...
-
Kids and Money: How Teen Attitudes are Shifting
Nine in 10 teens say the recession has affected them, and a new survey reveals how their attitudes towards money, materialism and family are shifting. by Dan Kadlec
-
FDA panel backs infant doses for kids' Tylenol
SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — Federal health experts said Wednesday that dosing instructions for children younger than 2 years old should be added to Children's Tylenol and similar products containing acetaminophen, the popular pain reliever and fever reducer.A panel of Food and Drug...
-
FDA weighs new dose info for kids' pain relievers
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials are considering adding dosing instructions for children younger than 2 years old to Children's Tylenol and similar products, a change favored by drugmakers and many doctors.The Food and Drug Administration meets next week to consider changes to...
-
Kids and Money: 5 Ways to Instill Good Habits
New research shows that paying kids to eat their vegetables turns them into vegetable lovers long after the bribes have ended. Paying kids to practice good money habits may produce the same result. Here's how. by Dan Kadlec
-
3 Lessons for Kids on Mother's Day
This year my family is starting a new Mother's Day tradition. I've asked my husband to take my older daughter shopping and to help her select a gift for me. No, it's not that I crave a new shiny object. It's just that I think the exercise will teach my five-year-old a few important lessons. by...
-
Gov't warns kids' tabletop chairs not safe
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government warned Friday that tens of thousands of tabletop feeding chairs for babies and toddlers are not safe.The Consumer Product Safety Commission says children could be hurt in certain versions of the "metoo" clip-on tabletop chairs imported by Colorado-based...
Search the web for 'Kids and Money' with Search.com
Facebook Activity
MoneyWatch Blogs
- Jane Bryant Quinn | Make the Most of Your Money
- Eric Schurenberg | Financial Independence
- Jill Schlesinger | Jill on Money
- Jerry Edgerton | Cars and Money
- John Keefe | The Macro View
- Carla Fried | The Daily Money
- Mark Thoma | Maximum Utility
- Stacey Bradford, Sarah Lorge Butler | Family Finance
- Ilyce Glink | Home Equity
- Marlys Harris | The Consumer Reporter
- Dan Kadlec | Bank of Dad
- Kathy Kristof | Devil in the Details
- Lynn O'Shaughnessy | The College Solution
- Farnoosh Torabi | You're So Money
- Ron Brown | Power Plays
- Robert Pagliarini | Your Other 8 Hours
- Amy Levin-Epstein | On the Job
- TheLadders | Career Management
- Dan Burrows | Investment Insights
- Conrad deAenlle | Against the Grain
- Nathan Hale | Mutual Fund Insider
- Allan Roth | The Irrational Investor
- Larry Swedroe | Wise Investing
- Charlie Farrell | Retirement Roadmap
- Ray Martin | What Works
- Steve Vernon | Money for Life