How to teach your teen financial literacy at home
How to teach your teen financial literacy at home By Gaurav Kapoor, CEO & Co-founder of Mydoh From an early age, I – and many others like me – have been focused on planning and saving for the future. Yet, we often miss those fundamental learning steps of building the skills needed to manage money confidently, from a young age. I was learning about allowances and money habits at a very young age, so when I entered adulthood, that saving instinct and responsible spending habit was already hard-wired in me. In 2016, I built my first product in personal money management for adults; however, I noticed a foundational gap in financial literacy in teens and youth, due to the lack of education and practice at a younger age. This is what inspired me to create Mydoh, a money management app and Smart Cash Card that helps parents help their kids build good money habits now, that will last a lifetime. Speak their Language To make children and teens understand the meaning of money, we need to find ways to speak their language. For instance, you want to buy a video game for $60, and you earn $15 per hour at your part-time job. The result is that four working hours equate to the cost of the game. This gives teens and children perspective on the value of money and helps them decide whether their desired purchase is truly worth it. What does this do? This helps to create a feeling of independence, confidence and empowerment. There are many ways to help your teen understand the importance of money, and that will build healthy spending and saving habits that can help them meet any short-term gratification and long-term goals. Here are three ways that you can teach your teen all about personal finance in a real and hands-on way: Need vs Want You hear kids and teens say, ‘I need it!’ many times. But the real question is: is it just that they want it? Need vs want is fundamental to learning about personal finance, especially for children. Needs are the essentials for daily living such as food or shelter. Wants are nice-to-haves, such as a box of cookies or a new PlayStation. Understanding this key difference helps in building a foundation for proper budget management, savings, and overall money sense. You can teach your teen or kids more about this with real-time learnings or using a youth money
3 Money-Saving Hacks for Families with Teens
3 Simple Money-Saving Hacks for Families with Teens Raising a teenager while also keeping an eye on your family’s finances can be a tricky balancing act. All parents want to provide their teens with the best possible opportunities and preparation for adulthood, but this can be an expensive undertaking, especially when you’re readying your young adult for college or university. Here are some easy ways for your family to get the most out of your hard-earned money and spend quality time enjoying those unique teenage years. Make higher education more affordable by applying to these easy scholarships It’s one of life’s eternal truths that higher education is expensive — really expensive. And while responsible saving and budgeting can help reduce the costs of tuition, textbooks (see below), and room and board, going to college or university is always going to be a costly decision. Although having a student loan may be inevitable, scholarships are a great way to reduce the cost of higher education. Unfortunately, many students are daunted by the idea of applying for scholarships, especially when there are long application forms and multiple essays involved. However, there are a number of excellent scholarship platforms that offer young people access to thousands of funding opportunities, no matter where they are in their education or what they hope to accomplish. There are numerous little-known scholarships that are just waiting to be awarded to the right applicant. Not only are scholarships available for academic excellence, but there are also scholarships that recognize athletic achievement, extracurricular involvement, community service, hobbies, career interests, family background and much more. Finding these scholarships might sound difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. Platforms such as Bold.org have helped a growing number of students locate and apply for funding. Bold.org uses comprehensive student profiles to match applicants with the scholarships that are most relevant to them, and that they are most likely to get. Notably, Bold.org boasts a wide variety of scholarships that aren't found on any other platform. These scholarships have been donated by philanthropists and organizations focused on everything from mental health and chemical engineering to female entrepreneurs and African-American journalists. Bold.org also has a lengthy, frequently-updated list of no-essay scholarships that high school and university students can apply for in a matter of minutes, thus increasing their chances of receiving a scholarship and making their education more affordable. Save hundreds of dollars every semester by renting textbooks Textbooks are a huge expense that