Inside: Teaching teens to manage money isn’t easy, but It’s so important. Using new tools like the Greenlight Debit Card can make it easier for everyone.
As parents of teens and tweens, teaching smart spending is an important aspect of life because we want our teens to grow up to be financially responsible adults. Unfortunately, money skills are rarely taught in schools these days. Most of our tweens and teens truly don’t understand the value of a dollar.
Teen Money Management and Budgeting
In the last decade, it has been projected that today’s younger generations will be the first ones to have a lower standard of living then their parents. Much of this is due to an increase in the cost of living that has come from inflation and other factors and the fact that wage growth hasn’t come close to keeping up. Additionally, with easier access to high limit credit cards, more and more young people are finding themselves financially compromised due to debt.
No one wants to see their kids struggling financially, nor do we want to be bailing them out (for those that would consider it). For these reasons and many more, it’s so important that our teens have a good understanding of money management.
One of the best ways we can help tweens and teens become competent money managers is to actually give them the chance to manage their own money with our supervision. It gets old having our kids constantly asking us for money to get snacks at school or buy a new video game or to go out with friends.
A better solution, and one that will begin to help your tweens and teens learn to budget and make wise money choices, is to us a Greenlight debit card!
What is Greenlight?
Greenlight is an established and trusted banking app and debit card for teens and tweens where parents can deposit funds, set flexible controls and get real time notifications on their kids’ spending activity – specifically when and where. It also makes the whole experience more fun with games that teach money skills, and allow kids and parents to work together to invest for the whole family, and build longterm wealth.
Allowances Made Easier
There are two different schools of thought when it comes to allowances. Many parents give their child an allowance for chores to teach them basic life skills. Other parents feels chores should just be considered part of being a contributing member of a family, and so they may give an allowance, but not tie it back to chores. Either way, remembering to pay the allowance and just overall oversight of how those funds are used can be overwhelming for parents. But with the Greenlight debit card, those transactions are made 10x easier with the app and all of its features.
The option to set spending limits is available, as well as chore management, savings rewards, and the ability to track balances in their account. You can even set the app on autopilot with an instant transfer feature, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting.
Protect Your Teen from Credit Card Debt
Using Greenlight is also an effective way to help tweens and teens understand credit card usage and can help warn them about the negative effects of having a credit card – it’s not free money!
While there are several “credit cards” that are geared towards teens and tweens where parents can monitor how they use it and what money is available, Greenlight is an excellent place to start teaching financial responsibility and it is the most established in the industry. Too many teens, college students and young adults end up with significant credit card debt at an early age because they don’t fully understand how credit and interest rates work. They also fail to understand the implications of a poor credit score or how long it can take to get out of credit card debt and improve your credit rating.
One of Greenlights core beliefs is that every child has the right to be financially healthy and happy. And this seems pretty in sync with what most parents want as well.
The Greenlight debit card is accepted anywhere that a Mastercard is and plans start as low as $4.99/month, after your free monthly trial of course!
Over 4 million families have opened Greenlight accounts. Use the app to invest in your teen or tween’s future – college, their first car or apartment, or anything else they’re aiming for!
It’s time to start empowering your child’s independence. Click below to learn more about Greenlight and all of its amazing tools that will benefit your family.
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