Summer is here and your kids are home. For most children, summer time is the season for them to look for ways in which they can earn cash and spend it on whatever they want. As parents, it is a perfect opportunity to instill the importance of financial responsibility and how to make good choices when spending money.
Let us look at some of the ways you can influence their decisions in their money making and spending ventures by tactfully sneaking in some good advice for money management for summer.
Allowance
It is not a bad thing to give your children money for little stuff they may want to buy for themselves here and there. However, the constant repetition of handing them money for the rest of the time they are in your house is not advisable. You might term it as harmless, but in the long run, you are raising a child that will feel entitled to it, even when they don’t deserve it or have turned into an age whereby they can make their own.
The sense of entitlement develops when a child gets anything and everything they want with little or no effort and the day when they don’t receive it, they will not understand why. In society, they turn out to be lazy misfits and you will never be able to shake them off financially because they do not know how to make or manage money.
That is why the allowance that you give them this summer should come with some conditions. Attach that money to work they do around the house. Give each of them chores that have to be finished by a certain time of the day. In other words, it should be a reward, not a right. If they do not accomplish what they are told to do to earn that money, then they don’t get it. The lessons you apply now, will eventually be very essential to their life as adults. You should implement money management for summer faithfully for this is the time they are eager to spend money.
Getting jobs for the Summer
If you have your own company, don’t employ your kid. Instead, let them go work for someone else. Being a boss and a parent at the same time does not work out. Emotions from the both of you might get in the way and you are also prone to be obviously biased when it comes to your child.
For older kids, they can get more responsible jobs like non agricultural jobs, mowing the lawn or paper delivery services.
Kids that are younger or under the age of 14, can water lawns and weed gardens or manage a lemonade stand. Money management for summer can prove to be quite a task for them, but that is the whole point. They should know the meaning of what it means to work hard for money.
After they start making money
Now this is the tricky part with money management for summer. Once they get that money in their hands, for most children; all they want is instant gratification. They either run to the candy store or play video games at an arcade. Of course, they are children. They can do that. But you have to be smart in your approach to influence them in doing something more constructive with their money that will also help you out financially. Some examples are:-
- Tell them that they can save some money so that you can all go for a family trip to Disneyland or somewhere kid friendly. Tell them if they save a certain amount, then you shall come up with the rest. They will definitely be eager to do it.
- Tell them they can go for that concert they always wanted to go to with the money that they save.
- Tell them that they can buy better items with the money they earn like video games, school shoes or a bicycle.
- Teach them the value of a good deal. You should show them how important it is to always shop around before going only to one shop and just buying the item they want. Teach them the importance of great bargains. That is one of the good tactics you should use for money management for summer.
All in all, the habits you help instill in your child do not only help their money management for summer, but it also helps them to grown into well informed, responsible adults. Of course, you cannot give them all this information without practicing what you preach, so be very aware what kind of financial habits you expose to your child. Money management for summer isn’t the only time they learn. It is every single day that they look up to you.