Have Your Children Been Taught to Save or Spend?

The time of year is quickly approaching for graduations. Along with that comes ,young adults who will be leaving for college for the very first time. Some will have never experienced so much freedom in their entire life. But as parents, it is important to guide our children on many things that they will encounter as they spread their wings and walk into young adulthood. This will be the first time that they will more than likely be approached and bombarded with so much which includes credit card applications.

I remember my freshman year in college. There were credit card representatives everywhere on campus. Foolishly, I applied for several. The crazy part is that I was approved with no job and no real income. I will never forget when my father found out. He took the cards because I had absolutely no money to pay for them. But before I told him about the cards, you better believe that I made a few trips to the mall. There were also some late-night orders of Domino’s pizza. My parents had excellent credit, but they never advised me how to use mine wisely. This was a task that I learned completely on my own as I got older.

I have made it a practice to explain to my children the importance of using their credit properly and maintaining a good credit score. I will be honest. In my experience, our African American community has not done as well as we could have with explaining how to establish and maintain good credit. Some things are learned in school, but as parents, we set our children up for failure by not training them for the real world according to our perspective. This leaves them inadequately prepared for life compared to other children. Children need to understand the purpose of having a checking and savings account. As well as knowing how checks work when they are written and the fact that it will be returned if there is no money in the bank to honor it. Checks and debit cards are not a free for like my daughter thought when she was five.

Your use of credit is something that follows you for an extended amount of time. Derogatory marks can stay on your credit report for seven years or more. It is so easy for your credit score to decrease when adverse reports and inquiries are added, but it takes a longer amount of time to increase your score once good remarks are reported each month. We must teach our children while they are young and begin to set them up for success in every area of life. These are lessons that we must give at home along with the things that they learn at school.

Make a promise to yourself and equip your children with the full information that they need for adulthood. Discuss what life as a grownup will look like, so they are not blinded like a deer in headlights when they are on their own for the first time. Help them write down a budget for themselves based on the money that they will receive for spending. This information is necessary. This will allow them to have a little less stress at the end of each day.

I have attached a free eBook, titled Money Management for Students, in the welcome section of the website. This will provide great information to each young adult as they head off to college. This will help your children who decide to take alternative journeys as well. It explains how and why they should be saving instead of spending. This will help them understand why they should avoid overspending versus sticking to their budget. These tendencies can increase for young adults when they feel stressed so reading this over the summer will help their transition go a little smoother as they leave high school.