http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2012/01/23/teens-should-learn-personal-finance-from-parents-teachers
Most
high school students don't
spend their time fretting over mortgages, stock prices, or their 401(k)
plans, but they are at an age when smaller financial responsibilities
start creeping into their lives. Many teenagers earn allowances and
begin working part-time jobs, so they need to make decisions about what
to do with their money.
High school students "also begin to have a lot more of a social life," says Margaret Magnarelli, senior editor of
Money magazine and author of the textbook
Per$onal Finance. "They might have a car and access to shopping and restaurants. And if they don't have a car, they want a car."
Teenagers often have many desires, but they must figure out how
to allot their money for the things they want, says Magnarelli, who
believes the first step to their financial understanding should be
taught by parents.
"When you're shopping, and your child says, 'I want X item,' you can
put that item into context," says Magnarelli. "Ask, 'what would it take
for you to save up to buy that? How many hours of your part-time job
would it take to achieve that?"
[This
high school-college hybrid grooms students for jobs.]
Parents can also help their kids understand financial
responsibilities by being transparent with their own money decisions,
says Magnarelli. For instance, she says parents can say, "We are not
able to go to Spain for vacation this year, because if we did you
couldn't go to basketball camp. So we're going to the New Jersey shore
instead."
Other ways parents can teach financial responsibility include helping
their kids set up a bank account and playing online stock market games,
says Magnarelli.
Teachers can also play a huge part in preparing students to make
financial decisions, says Magnarelli, even if the school doesn't offer a
personal finance course.
[Learn how some states push to
teach personal finance in school.]
"It's a practical skill that fits nicely into a lot of [curricula],"
she says. "These kinds of lessons can be incorporated into other topics
easily and smoothly."
Magnarelli explains that a math teacher could show compound interest,
or an economics teacher can talk about finance on a micro level. One of
the teachers who reviewed the
Per$onal Finance book brought
newspaper clippings into class and discussed personal finance that way,
she says. He would show an article about a car accident, for example,
and ask how an incident like that would affect the students' money
decisions.
Financial lessons taught by both parents and teachers will go a long
way in helping high school students in the future, says Magnarelli.
At this age, she says, "There are a lot of responsibilities that are
building into what's going to be a bigger responsibility as they
graduate from high school—whether they're
going into college or whether they're going off into the working world."
After high school, Magnarelli says, students will have to think about
how much money they make, how much of that income goes toward taxes,
and how the rest of the paycheck will cover rent, food, entertainment,
and other expenditures.
"They're probably not conscious of that yet—of the financial
commitments that are coming up—but that's why it's important to be
teaching them these skills about managing the money that they have now."
