Setting up a budget is a good habit to stay financially sound. As a parent, it’s your responsibility to bring your children up with good habits. Financial responsibility is something your children have to learn. Teach them to respect the dollar. There is an saying that “Money does not grow on trees” and your children need to learn that early on. However, at the same time, children will be children and they will try to escape your learning. Teaching them to budget gives them the tools to account for their money and be financially responsible.
Get Down With Your Spouse
Once you have decided on this, you and your partner need to be on the same page, so both of you don’t contradict each other later on. Your partner may put up objections such as “they are just children”, but in this day and age, with children maturing faster, you need to make them responsible. It would be unwise to assume your partner is on the same page as you, so best to talk it out and come to compromise on the issue.
Make sure to involve your spouse in the activities with your kids.
Adding Them to Household Budget
One of the best ways to get them involved in the household budget is to give them a section of their own. Children make their own spending outside from the home with their own pocket money. This spending can involve simple things as buying candy or an ice cream outing. Get them to account for their spending through a smartphone or a notebook which they can then add to the household budget.
Visiting the Supermarket
Once they start accounting for their own spending, it’s time you get them more involved in the family budget. Your children probably like to help you out in getting items on the shopping list and picking up things which they want.
The supermarket is the best way to get them into the household budget. There are many activities you can get them with, like giving them a challenge of fitting all the shopping list items within a limited budget amount.
Counting Your Savings
The greatest advantage of creating a budget is that you manage to save money. You have to get your children to understand that. It would work as an incentive for them to save. You can dissect their section in the household budget and show them how they could have saved money.
Planning Family Activities Together
Eventually, you want to get them to help you out in planning and budgeting a family trip. Get them to decide on a hotel, transport options, etc depending on the budget. Let them understand the weight of their decisions and not just the convenience of it.
Patience and creativity is what you need to get your family involved in the household budget. It will take some time for your children to get used to a household budget and often, you will have to point them in the right direction. At the same time, you have to be creative and make it fun. That’s the best way to get them interested.
