 Ask you where you learned about managing money...when you were a student at your parents' knee or in the school of hard knocks dealing with burdens of debt from excessive use of your credit cards? And than try to answer where your kids should learn. The cheerless fact is that there are really only two places our kids can learn: from us - their parent's, or on the street, since our educational system doesn't teach reasonable money management.
And you must agree that learning from someone who's experienced the hard-knocks is distinctly better than letting our children suffer through the alternative. Simply review how we've been doing:
– we've given nearly one third of all high school students at least one credit card for their personal use, with at least half of those in the student's own name;
– we've given more than three quarters of all college and university students personal credit cards, who carry a normal balance just under $3,000, with fully ten recent carrying a balance in excess of $7,500
– we've arranged it so that, last year, just under 100,000 adults aged 25 or less were required to file for bankruptcy to keep from going under.
Teaching Your Student How to Use Their Credit Card Wisely
You must ask what to do.
1) About the time our kids are in sixth grade we should be teaching - actually, at this stage it's really just discussing and explaining – to our kids about banks, banking, and interest rates... nothing sophisticated, just what they are, why they're there, the principle of work, saving and borrowing, etc. Your purpose is to make sure that by the time they're in high school they comprehend banking fundamentals.
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