• Stick with a monthly allowance and budget, adding greater purchase responsibilities, and considering how much your kids earn from working.
• Include responsibilities for a broader range of needs and wants.
  • Needs might include clothing, school or sports supplies, toiletries, gas, etc.
  • Wants might include eating out with friends, gym membership, and other social activities.
• You should still discuss and plan together for saving towards larger spending goals.
• Expand technology solutions to assist with budget tracking.
• Talk about your own personal money management successes (and failures), to help your kids make wiser decisions.
• Your kids are young adults but they still need your input.
  • Avoid telling your kids what to do but remain engaged, with check-ins, establishing ground-rule expectations, and offering advice.
  • Give guidance on making wise purchase decisions. Remind your kids to consider price, value, quality, needs versus wants, what you can afford, and family values when making purchases.
  • Help them monitor spending and purchases, using online apps and banking functions to develop a budget. If spending isn’t aligning with the budget, help to figure out why.
  • Focus on the positives, encouraging progress and actions toward important goals.
• One of the best ways to teach budgeting lessons is to avoid bailouts.
  • If your kids run out of money, encourage them to work to earn the money they need, or to consider free activities instead.
  • Extending a loan can teach your kids about how to get out of and stay out of debt. Be sure to charge interest by your kids’ late teens.

• Employment experience can help your children to:
  • Gain insight into an industry or work setting they might be considering as a future career.
  • Learn important personal skills like time management, work responsibilities, and how to behave in a professional setting.
  • Develop self esteem and confidence.
  • Keep them occupied, limiting opportunities for them to get involved with negative influences.
• The benefits of work should always be weighed against school and other time commitments.
• If you don’t believe working is appropriate, consider volunteer positions. Positions are often available in hospitals, museums, animal shelters, and other organizations. Your kids will gain similar experiences and a greater sense of responsibility.
• A paid position provides the foundation for a conversation about taxes. Discuss the purpose taxes serve and how tax rates gradually increase as earnings rise.
• One of the wisest allocations of earned income is to contribute to college savings. Your kids gain a vested interest in their education and a greater understanding of exactly how much it costs to attend college.
  • This is a particularly important discussion if you are not planning to, or are unable to, pay for the bulk or all of their college tuition.

• Encourage use of online tools available at your bank. Engage with your kids and share passwords. This helps you to better monitor balances and spending.

• Consider establishing a separate account for your kids to save for college or other long-term goals.
• Have your kids balance their own accounts by tracking deposits and withdrawals using online functions and/or personal finance apps that link directly.
• Even if you don’t add checks to your children’s accounts, teach them how to write out a check and other banking essentials.

• Be sure that any loan can be paid off within six to twelve months.
• Set up monthly repayment amounts and have your kids pay you in cash. Don’t auto debit the payment from their allowance.
• Track repayments and provide a summary of their loan balance every month. This should include interest paid to date, interest owed, and the total amount that will have been paid when the loan completes.
  • Use an online calculator system if needed.
• Let your kids prepay if they are able to or want to.
  • Discuss how some loans can charge an early termination fee.
• Don’t let your children fall behind with payments.
  • Discuss how debts can become unmanageable if payments aren’t made.
  • Explain what a credit score is and how delinquent debt can impact future borrowing opportunities.

• Try to be a good financial role model, by thinking about the following:
  • How you manage your own finances.
  • How you talk about money with your kids and others.
  • What you say about work.
  • Your individual money personality.
• However you relate to money, the strongest piece of advice is to avoid extremes. Don’t be too stringent or too free with your spending and relationship with money; both have lasting effects.

If you are well-off, give careful consideration to the wealth effect. This relates to the expectations you are establishing for your kids in terms of lifestyle and privilege, and whether these standards of living will be available to them later in life.