While too many children are not being instructed at home about wise ways to handle money, businesses are eager to take up the slack. As parents put more and more shopping cash into the hands of younger and younger children, businesses are targeting kids as young as 8. Last year, a well known bank announced a new credit card, which can be used like a debit card. The Web site for the card, which bears the image of the teen actress, urges visitors to use the card because ‘cash is so yesterday’.
Why target the pre-teen? In the U.S., children between the ages of 8 and 14 control 39 billion shopping dollars and influence billions more in purchases. Entire conferences are organized around the goal of teaching businesses to build brand awareness in tweens. Children are preys. Marketers know it’s more efficient to go after children who can nag their parents into buying things for them.
Obviously, parents can’t lay the entire blame on those in business to make money. In addition to corporate marketing, spending habits are influenced by children’s fast-paced days that make it difficult to analyze purchases, peers, and ‘magical thinking’, in which money seems to just ‘appear’ from ATMs and parents’ pockets without a concrete trail of where it really comes from.
Just as parents need to educate their children about such topics as healthy eating and the value of school, financial industry experts say lessons about money should be added to the list. Parents don’t need to be stock-market whizzes to teach such basic money lessons, experts say, and the goal is not to create junior MBAs. All parents have to do is lay the seeds.
To teach a child about money management, parents should consider the fundamental goals they are trying to teach. A child with a good understanding of these basic skills and a history of discussing money management is better prepared to tackle an issue that will have a critical impact on their adult life.