Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

How To Prepare Your Teens to Live On Their Own

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Sure, you love your children, but there’s no doubt that raising them is expensive.  Many parents miss their kids when they move out, but they’re glad to be rid of a heavy financial obligation. . .unless the adult child moves back in.  Suddenly, aging parents may find themselves paying for Junior again, negatively affecting their finances.  One of the best ways to guard against that is to make sure Junior is ready to responsibly handle his finances when he flies the coop.

How to Prepare Your Teens to Live on Their Own

Since our son was about 12 years old, he has been eagerly anticipating moving out and living on his own when he turns 18.  We want to make sure that when he does move out (whether that’s at 18 or a year or two later), that he can live independently and sustainably.  These are some of the skills we’re working on.

How to Prepare Your Teens To Live On Their Own

There are some essential skills your child should master before moving out of the home:

Have a Strong Work Ethic

Some teens leave the nest never having worked a job or done chores around the house.  Kids who leave home without a strong work ethic are less likely to successfully transition from childhood to adulthood, meaning they have a higher chance of ending up back at home.

Teach children from the time they’re young to work for the things they want.  This becomes even more important as they reach the teen years.  Rather than just give your child $20 when she wants to head to the movies with friends, make her work for her money by doing a job around the house or helping a neighbor with a task.

Budget and Handle Money Responsibly

How to Prepare Your Teens To Live on Their Own

Many an adult child has moved back home saddled with debt from the college years.  To avoid this, in the high school years, teach your child how to budget.  Show her how you budget for the family and have her create her own budget with the money she earns from an allowance or part-time job.  Teach her to save for an emergency fund and to save for upcoming expenses.

Just as important as teaching her how to budget is to teach her how to use money responsibly.  One way to do start doing this is to give your 13 or 14 year-old child the money you would normally spend for her clothes for the season.  Let your child buy her own clothes with the money, and she will start learning how far a dollar stretches.  Another way to do this is to let her buy her own food.

Buy and Cook Food

How to Prepare Your Teens to Live on Their Own
Photo by Andy Chilton on Unsplash

When our son was 15.5 years old, we decided to give him a weekly grocery budget and let him do all of his own grocery shopping and cooking.  This has been interesting to watch.  The first few weeks, he ate too many carbs because they were cheap and he thought they would fill him up, which he quickly found to not be true.

The next few weeks, he had a meat heavy diet, which left him feeling sluggish.

The weeks after that, he started finding healthy recipes with balanced nutrition.  He did all of this with minimal input from us.  He learned by doing and experiencing.

Plus, he’s learning not only how to grocery shop wisely, but also how to meal plan and cook, essential skills for when he leaves the home.

Final Thoughts

Obviously, there are many steps to get a teen ready to leave the nest, but right now in our family, we’re focusing on these three as they seem most important for a teen to be able to successfully live on their own.

What suggestions would you add for how to prepare your teens to live on their own?

 

Why You Need a Budget If You’re Broke

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When you have plenty of money coming in, budgeting can be easy.  You have enough money to pay all of your bills, and you have extra money to put aside for things like a vacation, holiday gifts, etc.  My husband and I have been in that position twice during our nineteen-year marriage, and budgeting was fun for me because I could see how we were meeting our goals.

The rest of our marriage, budgeting has been a struggle.  When you don’t have enough money coming in to save for anything fun like a night out on the town with your spouse or a yearly vacation, perhaps even not enough money to meet your monthly obligations, budgeting can feel like torture.  You may be tempted to join the 59% of Americans who don’t budget (CNN).  Yet, this is when you most need to budget.

There are several reasons why you need a budget if you’re broke.

Why You Should Keep a Budget If You're Broke

Prioritize Your Obligations

If money is tight, a budget can help you prioritize your obligations.  If you don’t have a budget, you may find that you don’t have enough money to pay all your bills, which is never a good position to be in.  Without a budget, it’s easier to spend money frivolously because you aren’t as aware of the repercussions.

A Clear Path to Your Goals

Let’s say one of your goals is to save $1,000 in an emergency fund, but money is tight.  Maybe you can only put aside $50 a month for that goal.  A budget helps you see that if you diligently put away $50 a month, you’ll have your emergency fund in 20 months.  Sure, that’s a long time, but you may be able to shorten that time by putting any extra or windfall money into the savings.  By doing that, you may be able to establish your $1,000 emergency fund in a year, eight months ahead of schedule.

Why You Should Keep a Budget If You're Broke
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

If you don’t have such a clear handle on your goals, you may instead spend that little bit of money frivolously every month—going out to eat with co-workers or watching a movie with friends instead of saving it.  Having a budget can make the path to your goals more concrete.

A Brighter Future

As you can see, just taking the simple steps of meeting your monthly obligations and prioritizing your goals can improve your financial situation.  If you make budgeting a habit, little by little, your financial situation will improve.  If you manage to put $650 in your emergency fund and then need a $500 car repair, you can pay for it in cash instead of going in debt.  Because you were able to stay out of debt, you won’t need to allocate money monthly to a payment and the accompanying interest.  Instead, you can work on reestablishing your emergency fund.

When you don’t have much money, the idea of creating a budget may seem intimidating and futile, but that’s ironically when you most need a budget.  If you have a clear view of where you are financially and you have a spending plan, you’re much more likely to improve your financial situation over the months and years ahead.

If your money is tight, do you keep a budget or do you prefer to just wing it financially?

9 Common Items for Guilt Free Regifting

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Inevitably it happens.  You open a gift from a well-meaning relative or coworker, only to discover it’s a gift card for a store you never frequent.  Or it’s the third scarf you’ve gotten this season.  Or it’s a pricey bottle of bourbon, and you don’t drink.  Rather than be disappointed by the gifts that you receive, consider regifting them and saving yourself money.  There are 9 common items for guilt free regifting that you should consider happily passing along to someone on your to-buy gift list.

9 Common Items for Guilt-Free Regifting

Gift Cards

Sure, you could sell the gift card, but an easier solution is to regift it.  If you never shop at a certain department store but you know that your mother-in-law does, why not regift the gift card to her?

Before regifting, make sure the card hasn’t been used, that you know its exact value, and that your own name isn’t written on it.

Homemade Desserts

9 Common Items for Guilt Free Regifting
Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

‘Tis the season to receive homemade desserts, again, and again.  You received peanut brittle and you hate peanuts?  Simply take the brittle and create your own homemade goodie plate to give to someone else.

Gourmet Food

Gift baskets with gourmet food abound during the holiday season.  These make excellent gifts, especially if you regift a meat and cheese basket to a man you know is on the Keto diet or a chocolate basket to your chocoholic office mate.

Personal Care Sets

You can easily regift personal care sets such as body lotions and lip glosses to any woman in your life, especially if you don’t know them well.  The same goes for men’s gift sets such as cologne or hair gel.

Soap

Most people don’t buy or make fancy soaps for themselves, so these make a perfect gift for the person in your life who loves personal care items with a flair.  This is also a great regift for those on your list that you don’t know well such as your child’s teacher.

Alcohol

Of all the regifts, this is likely one of the best ones to give.  Plenty of people would appreciate receiving a bottle of alcohol, especially high-quality alcohol, for a gift.

Books

As long as you haven’t read it and the book still looks brand new, consider regifting it to your favorite bibliophile.

Pen Sets

A fancy pen set is on my list of the most boring gifts ever, but some people really like having a fancy pen that writes smoothly.  Consider regifting this to the academic or business person in your life.

New Clothing

If you receive gloves, scarves, hats, etc., these make the perfect gifts to regift because they’re fairly generic.  Just make sure the price tag is still on and the item is in pristine condition.

Regifting, when done well, i.e. carefully considering if the other person would actually like the regift rather than just giving it to her because you have to give her a gift, can offer several benefits.  First, you get rid of a gift you don’t want or need.  Second, you save money by not buying an additional gift.  Third, you help the environment by consuming a bit less because you’re passing on your unwanted gift rather than buying a new one.

The holiday season is the time when most people regift.  However, don’t forget, you can also regift for birthdays and housewarming parties.  Perhaps save one bottle of alcohol as a gift when you’re invited to a dinner party.