Children are easily influenced during their early years. This is mainly because they don’t know better and they draw inspiration from the things around them. They’ll look at their parents and friends to learn how they should interact with the world, and it’s important that you instil good habits into your children from an early age.
With technological advances and the internet being more open and accessible, spending habits are a major concern among children. There are many horror stories of children spending thousands on smartphone and tablet games and apps because they don’t know better. It doesn’t help that apps now make it easy for you to make multiple back-to-back purchases and there’s virtually no protection unless you enable the child locks. Even then, it’s easy to make mistakes and your children need to be protected from these types of bad spending habits. To help you out, we’ve put together some useful advice that will help you teach your children better spending habits.
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Teach your children about finances as early as possible
You could run some games or exercises with your children that teach them about money and debt. It might be a difficult concept for them to understand, but with a bit of teaching and patience, it’s possible to teach kids good financial habits from an early age. However, this does mean that you need to be firm and vigilant with how you spend on them.
No more spoiling
Don’t use your kids as an excuse to make large purchases because this will only spoil them. Many parents don’t realize that spoiling your children is a quick way to teach them poor financial habits. It doesn’t matter if it’s sweets, a soft toy or the latest electronic gadgets–you need to be firm with them and stop them from coercing you into buying them extra things. Instead, encourage spending on meaningful things such as extracurricular activities, classroom equipment or extra study material. Teach your kids the difference between good and bad spending and you’ll be surprised at how mature they can be at a young age.
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Taking money too lightly
If possible, teach your children early on about what it takes to make money. Whether it’s applying for loans online or digging into your bank account with the auto-saved details, your children may start to take money lightly because they can see how easily you obtain it. While getting an online loan can be positive and beneficial, it’s still important to teach your children that money is not easy to obtain and it doesn’t grow on trees. It takes a lot of dedication and hard work to obtain and it’s important they understand this at an early age.
Some final words
As mentioned at the beginning, children are easy to influence. What you teach them at an early age will stick with them forever, so instil some good financial habits into them from an early age and balance how you spoil them so that it doesn’t become the norm.
