Teaching your kids or grandkids how to handle money will be worth far more to them than any cash you give.
You’ve heard the old saying about teaching someone to fish instead of giving them a fish.
The young kids in your family can now download apps to help them learn how to manage their “fish.”
Budgeting.
Saving.
Tracking allowances and holiday cash gifts.
Parents paying allowances and for completing chores.
Keeping an emergency fund.
Balancing a checkbook.
Buying things with their own prepaid cards.
Parents can monitor how much children are saving and how they’re spending their funds.
One of the apps aims to teach children the difference between their wants and needs, so they don’t give in to impulse spending. (Plenty of adults need that app.)
Build a Foundation of Fiscal Responsibility Early in Life
The CEO of one of those apps, Gimi, told CNN Business that becoming good at managing money was “about the attitude and the relationship you have with your parents’ money when you’re six to 12 years old.”
I began earning money by delivering newspapers at the age of fourteen. That’s good. But over the years, I spent it on albums, books and dates. Not so good.
Why didn’t I ever buy shares of stocks when I could have? I worked and made money, but I didn’t understand the big financial picture of my whole life.
I didn’t have a clue until I got married and discovered what it felt like to be responsible for another person.
What if I’d learned early in life from an app?
Personal Finance is Changing Along With Everything Else
Cash is still king, but its importance in our daily financial life is dwindling.
I remember learning how to use checks as a sort of rite of passage into adulthood. Many young adults now don’t even bother to order checks when they open a checking account at a bank. Why pay for what you won’t ever use? All they want is the debit card.
Recently, I took a check from a young woman. I’m sure she’s well-educated, but she didn’t know how to write it. She wrote the money amount on the “Pay to the order of” line. When I pointed this out, she put the person’s name on the second line, mixing up both lines.
Yet, I’m sure she knows how to use her debit card. If she keeps her expenses below her post-tax income and pays off her debts, she’s doing well.
Children may as well learn to manage money using electronic apps because that’s what they’re going to need to know. Even cards are going to be disrupted by QR codes displayed on smartphones. You may not be able to withdraw money from an ATM without one.
Children Must Learn Early On = Electronic Blips are NOT Monopoly Money
If you’ve ever traveled outside the United States, you’ve noticed how easy it is to spend foreign money. You know you had to buy those red, blue and purple paper bills with your US dollars, but, somehow, they don’t seem as valuable.
Some experts believe these money apps for children may teach them it’s just a game.
Because it’s just blips on a screen, electronic money can seem even less real than paper euros or pounds. That’s why children must learn early on the connection between those blips and the real-life consequences of having money – or losing it.
Saving money now can buy them the really important physical things in life.
But spending too much will put them into debt.
And, yes, the whole learning process should be fun.
Schools Refuse to Teach Basic Personal Finance
I used to work with people who were very poorly trained about money. Their families didn’t teach them because their families were ignorant.
I once remarked to a coworker that local schools ought to teach mandatory classes on basic finance. Like what is a checking account, how to balance a checkbook and how life insurance works.
She told me that when she lived in Chicago, somebody tried to get such a program put into that city’s schools. However, all the usual suspects and “progressive activists” opposed the idea, so it never happened.
Therefore, Teaching Your Kids and Grandkids is Your Responsibility
Saving and investing will remain important throughout their lives. As will spending less than you make, so you stay out of debt.
But they need to see and understand it in modern terms.
Here are a number of apps to check out:
1. P2K Money – Preteens – Free – budgeting and savings
2. Kids Money – 5+ – Free – Savings budget & long-term planning
3. Save! The Game – Preteens – Free – teaches the difference between wants and needs
4. Bank of Mom – 13+ – $1.99 – Parent controlled virtual account
5. FamZoo – 13+ – $6 per month – set up prepaid debit cards parents can track
6. Greenlight – 13+ – $5 per month – debit card
7. PiggyBot – 6 to 8 – Free savings and tracking allowances
8. Current – 13+ – $36 per year – debit card
9. Savings Spree – 7 to 8+ – $5.99
10. Gimi – preteens – Free – money management
11. Visa Practical Money Skills App – for all ages – free
12. Bankaroo – 7+ – Free on iOS and $2.99 on Android – Money tracking and checking account balancing
13. Green$treets: Unleash the Loot – 5 to 8 – Free
14. Renegade Buggies – 6 to 11 – Free – savings
15. Celebrity Calamity – 6+ – Free – budgeting using celebrities
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16. Motion Math: Cupcakes – 7 to 8+ – $4.99 money management
Some of these are free, some cost money. Some are more appropriate for younger children, others for teens.
They’re all worth checking out.
