Finance Board

Well, that’s a good question and continues to be a dilemma for most parents. As a parent you want to help your adult child, but you want your child to become independent of you in most cases! You want your adult child to spread their wings and find their own space! But, sometimes that may be more difficult in our present day due to the high cost of housing. It may take your adult child more time to save up for their first apartment or home. Especially if they just finished college and may have student loans that they will need to pay back. So, you really want to help your adult child by letting them live with you, but, you want them not to become dependant upon you if you help them. Here are some tips and information you may want to consider when thinking about letting your adult child live with you:

1) Consider charging your adult child rent while they are staying with you once they have secured a job. This will teach your adult child responsibility and how to manage their personal finances. They’ll need this experience in the future when they have their own apartment or home.

2) If you don’t want to charge your adult child rent or don’t believe their financially able to pay rent, consider having them pay part or all of a utility bill which would include the electric, gas or cable bill.

3) If your adult child wants to use your telephone, make sure they have their own telephone line or cell phone that they are responsible for paying the bill. This will eliminate future headaches for you later, if your phone bill increases to an astronomical amount, due to your adult child living in your home.

4) Consider having your adult child purchase their own food or contribute to the purchase. You may find that your food bill may increase substantially when your adult child moves in. So, in order to alleviate problems with the potential added cost, have your adult child contribute to the cost or get their own food. Remember you’re trying to teach them responsibility and how to manage their own personal finances. So this is a way to do this!

5) Set ground rules for your adult child prior to them moving into your home. Remember, the bottom line is, this is your home and you want to be comfortable while you adult child is living with you. Make sure you make clear whether or not your adult child can have a boyfriend or girlfriend stay overnight in your home, responsibility for certain household chores and any additional ground rules you will want to discuss with your adult child. This will hopefully alleviate problems in the future!

6) You may want to consider setting a time frame for how long your adult child can live with you. That is if you want them to eventually get out on their own and become self sufficient. By doing this, your adult child will continue to learn responsibility and full independence by getting a place of their own!

It’s okay to help your adult child by letting them live with you. However, you don’t want them to be dependant on you forever! You want them to get themselves financially secure to become self sufficient and an independent adult, being able to take care of themselves in their own place! After all, you’ve raised them to carry their own torch so they can be prepared when you’re no longer able to help them!

Nocita Carter is a writer and web designer that creates websites providing informative tips on various subject matter including personal finance tips on your personal finances at http://www.personal-finance-tips-for-you.com ; dating tips at http://www.mydating-tips.com and your choice of ebooks at http://www.ebook-corner-for-you.com

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Teaching financial literacy has been my passion. Over the years I’ve had an opportunity to speak to parents who want to know how to talk to their children about money and want tips to help them become more independent before they go off into the real world.

For many parents it seems like just yesterday that your children were on their way to kindergarten, but now that they’re in middle school things seem to be happening way too fast. Tweens seem to go from having play dates to group movie dates right in front of your eyes.

And they’re fashion conscious and brand sensitive far earlier than we ever were. This is all the more reason for us to help them get a financial grip on money and the need for saving by talking to them early and often about ways to save and spend money responsibly.

Here are a few things you can do to get your tween ready for the day when you’ll need to cut the strings and watch them spread their well-prepared financial wings.

Giving your tween an allowance is a great money move. It will help you as a parent reign in their budget-busting requests while teaching them the value of a dollar and saving for the things they really just “must” have.

In her book, “Kids and Money: Giving Them the Savvy to Succeed Financially,” author Jayne A. Pearl says this about giving your children a fixed spending budget. “Allowance is an effective way to start transmitting to your kids financial literacy, values, and decision-making skills.”

When tweens have access to money they can better understand the meaning of it and the proper ways to use it. Trying to help them understand the basics of money management using something that they have earned and saved for is powerful. Often that new “thing” they just had to have when you were paying for it becomes less important to them when they come to realize that it will greatly reduce the amount of money they will have left.

If your family doesn’t embrace the allowance concept but still wants to help your children have first-hand experience with money management, another way to teach tweens about money is through interactive learning experiences and board games such as:

Life

Payday

Monopoly Jr.

The Allowance Game and

Cashflow for Kids

These are all wonderful ways to teach lasting lessons in an entertaining way. Not only will these games help your child strengthen their math and problem solving abilities, they’ll also understand basic money concepts.

Finally, encourage your children to save with a purpose and if possible offer to add a small percentage to whatever they have saved. This teaches the lesson of compound interest and how money grows if left untouched.

The next time your child wants a new bike, skateboard or series of Karate lessons use it as a chance to challenge their desire for what they want by having them save for it. As an extra incentive agree to match their savings dollar for dollar up to a set amount or a specific period of time.

The benefit of this to you is that your child will develop discipline and a habit of not spending every dime they get their hands on. Plus, when you make the goal one that’s reachable even if they fall short, you can assist them so they will be encouraged to try again next time.

The biggest thing to remember is to encourage their new saving habits and find ways to support them so they’ll actually think of it as something fun. Once that happens you’ve created a situation that will develop a positive attitude toward saving for a lifetime!

Sanyika Calloway Boyce has made her share of money mistakes. She now teaches financial literacy programs for teens, college student and adults. Visit
http://www.financialfitnesscoach.com

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As a widowed/single parent, I wanted to find a way to financially educate my children and to teach them to be savers first, not over-spenders. Like most children, mine would immediately start whining about wanting everything they saw in the stores and begging me to buy those things. So I decided to start giving my children an allowance to minimize the “I want monster” when we go to stores. But, not just any old allowance!

I explained to them that each week I would give them their allowance, but not in the form of cash… but a check. We would go to the bank each week, fill out a savings deposit ticket (which they do, I supervise) and deposit most of the check. They need to give $1 per week in the offering at church; they would also need to deposit, at minimum, half of the check. The remaining portion, they could cash and spend as they like.

Now when we go errand running and they come up to me and ask if I will buy them a toy or what I call an unnecessary item, I remind them that they have their allowance money and ask them if they are willing to spend their money on that particular item. The answer is almost always “No.”

Two important points: First, the reason I give them a check for their allowance instead of cash is because cash can be spent quickly and easily. A check is not really any good until you get it to the bank and cash or deposit it. This one little trip to the bank has forced them to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n their spending thoughts and habits. Especially when they look at their savings log after the bank teller has brought down their balance after adding in their deposit. Their faces just light up when they see how much money they have saved! By the end of the first year, they both had accumulated over $200.

Second point, when I asked them why most of the time they decide against buying the item, their answer is usually, “I don’t want it that bad.” I was thrilled to see that they were learning what they wanted and didn’t want and they weren’t willing to spend money on those items! They are learning to tell the difference between their wants and needs.

With a society consumed with credit card debt, I know that this lesson with handling money will payoff for them well into their adult lives.

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Julie D. Raque
http://www.matrixcoachingservices.com

“Look at your life up till now, if you had hired someone to manage it, would you give them a raise, or fire them? If you’d fire them, then you need Coach Raque!” Visit her website to receive a free coaching session. To learn more about Coach Raque also visit http://www.bestwishesoflouisville.com

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