Life Skills Should Be Learned at an Early Age
With a new year beginning, there’s no better time to teach your student various life lessons and skills.
Why It Matters
- Financial skills are needed now more than ever.
There’s no denying the role global economics plays with personal finances. Budgeting skills are even more essential than ever and taking charge of personal finances gives purpose toward future goals. If your eighth grader’s future goal is buying a new electronic device, attending college or living independently after high school, then fostering budgeting habits at this age sets the groundwork for a strong financial direction. - Saving money isn’t the only real-life skill to learn.
You know what bills your income needs to pay, but does your student? Explain the various bills that require payment every month — mortgage or rent, cell phone bill, utilities, groceries, insurance — and pinpoint which ones require priority as fixed expenses that are paid on pre-determined dates. - Household maintenance is never-ending.
Maintaining a household is a string of endless duties — laundry, cooking meals, cleaning, paying bills, arranging schedules and vehicle maintenance. Shouldering all of them is stressful. An effective leader knows how to delegate. If your student is asking for more liberties, such as more screen time, now is the time to negotiate a few trade-offs.
What Your Student Can Do Now
- If not previously done, open a savings account.
If your student already has a savings account for depositing birthday and holiday gifts, that’s a very good start. Be sure to point out the benefits of compound interest, even when interest rates are low, and the time value of money. - Offer to help.
Adults in a household assume multiple roles, which can be exhausting and overwhelming. Your student has most likely displayed some talents that can shift some of the workload from your shoulders. Perhaps a future teacher can help younger siblings finish homework while the adult begins meal preparation. Chore rotation among siblings can help foster responsibility and a vision for how a household operates as a whole.
What Your Student Can Do Later
- Make it a regular habit.
If your student has assumed a household task with competence, consider attaching a monetary value to it with the caveat that all or a portion of it be put into the savings account. Explore any other responsibilities your pre-teen can take on without affecting study time. - Earn money, if possible.
Your student is at an ideal age to earn wages from babysitting, shoveling neighbors’ driveways or mowing lawns. These experiences are sometimes a starting point to a successful start-up business, such as a lawn care, landscaping or snow removal company.
What You Can Do
- Talk about needs and wants.
A list of needs and wants is one of the first steps in learning how to budget. If you have your own personal list, show it to your student and explain how you prioritize your spending and saving. If you receive requests from family members for special items or trips, explain how you make adjustments in your budget to accommodate or possibly deny those requests if the budget can’t support an additional expense. - Share your methods.
If you feel you have strong budgeting skills, share them with your student. If not, then explore free resources that include curriculum and games, such as the ones included with this article. Find a particular app to use together and set a common goal, whether it’s a family outing you can all look forward to or a much-anticipated household item.
Next Steps
Be sure to complete the survey questions at the end of this article to be entered into the 529 deposit giveaway!
Additional references, handouts and talking points are available in the right sidebar to use at your leisure. They may prove beneficial to reference now or after receiving future emails – we’ll leave it completely up to you. Use our emails like a recipe for a successful outcome — assemble the recommended ingredients and then follow accompanying directions to add flavor and depth.