Teaching Financial Literacy to Youth

The importance and value of teaching financial literacy to our youth cannot be overstated. If this generation of young people cannot build their credit, manage a budget, or apply basic investment knowledge then we have produced an entire generation on their way to a lifetime of poverty and financial strife.

Recent studies show that over 70% of college graduates plan on moving back home with their parents after they graduate and many will stay there into their mid thirties simply because they lack financial literacy skills. Parents if you don't want to be embarrassed when you tell your friend that your 35 year old kid still lives with you, then pay close attention to this article.

By teaching financial literacy to children we give them the opportunity to consider their futures more carefully. When we preach the advancements made possible by going to college we often neglect to show them some specific examples or give them the other skills that will maximize their investment in a higher education. We often fail to show them how to take the extra money they earn with a college degree and get that working for them by establishing a savings and investment plan.

Here are 5 tips to ensuring you empower your children or students with practical money skills.

1) Motivate them by relating money to the ability to live the lifestyle they desire.

2) Start your children saving money when they are young.

3) Get them involved in your financial decisions and set family financial goals.

4) Have them open their checking, savings and brokerage account immediately.

5) Sign your child up for a professional financial education course.

Ensuring that we teach financial literacy to children is actually the key to preventing future financial problems for our children and for the world. If we can teach the future generations how to manage money and how to make it appropriately we offer the entire world a better financial outlook. Each child will contribute to the financial ruin or the financial success of our world's future.

We can take the time now to teach financial literacy to children or we can end up teaching it to today's kids when they turn into tomorrow's adults. By then it can be too late. It is much easier to stay out of debt than to dig your way out of it; that is why we must teach financial literacy to our children before they leave home.

Unfortunately, our children will not be able to count on social security or Medicare. On top of that, due to our debt problem and the almost certainty of inflation, there will be an accelerated cost of living that is projected to be quite significant. Unfortunately, projected incomes for many of today's minimum wage jobs do not coincide evenly with poverty projections.

Those issues may be disheartening but by taking the time to teach financial literacy to your children you equip a child to move into adulthood with confidence and abilities that will serve them for the rest of their lives.

It's not easy to grow up in a financially unstable world. By making this mission a top priority we can count on the financial success of tomorrow.

Article by Vince Shorb