To The Moon

Teach Kids How To Spend Wisely

When your child has their own hard-earned money to spend, you’ll want to teach them ways they can get the best value. Here are some activities to help them learn how to do this.

Comparison Shopping

Pick a product and ask your child which stores they would go to to compare prices. Ask them if they can find a similar product at a cheaper price. If so, should they automatically buy the cheaper product? Not necessarily. Cheaper is not always better. Ask them what they think “The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low cost” means. 

The answer is cheap products may not taste as good, or be as good for you, or work, or last, or have to be repaired or replaced a lot sooner than a quality product. How do they know if a product is a quality product? Brands are an important indicator, so are product comparison sites and product reviews.

Buying During Sales

Why pay the full price now when you know there is a good chance the product will be on sale sometime in the future? Get them to search online for stores having sales. How much money in dollars can they save if they buy the product on sale?

Buying Online

Find something to buy online and go through the purchase process with them. Explain how to check that the site is a legitimate business. A padlock and HTTPS:// at the start of the URL is a good start. Then Google the company name and see what references you can find to that company. Alarm bells should start ringing if there aren't any. You might be prepared to share with them a bad experience you’ve had shopping online and discuss how you could have ensured a better outcome.

Buying Second Hand

If they buy an item second hand, they can make significant savings, especially if they buy a quality product or one designed to last. Talk about something you have purchased second hand. Did it work like it should? Did it last? How much money did you save compared to buying the product new? The second hand product may not have lasted as long as a new product or may have had to be repaired sooner - if so, did you really save money in the long run?

Discuss Peer Pressure

Ask your child if they’ve ever felt pressured to do something or own something to fit in? Comfort them with the understanding that everyone feels peer pressure, it’s not just them. Tell them if they feel like they are being pressured into buying something they don’t know much about or don’t really want or can’t really afford, it’s fine for them to say “no”. If they get a hard time for this, tell them if they focus on what’s important to them and things they like, they will attract people who value the same things and will enjoy healthier relationships.

Discuss Advertising

Ask your child if they’ve seen an advertisement and thought to themselves “I’ve just got to have that!”. Identify some strategies they can put in place to resist acting on that thought. Like; they don’t have it now and they are ok, so do they really need it? Will their life really be all that different if they don’t have the product? Explain that advertisers are very clever with getting people to spend their money and that a smart person only buys something when they have considered their budget, their options and what their priorities are.

To summarise:

Good spending strategies are:

Comparison shopping

Buying on sale

Buying on line

Buying second hand

Not falling prey to peer pressure and advertising

We go into all this in more detail in MoneyTime, our gamified online financial literacy program for 10-14 year olds: www.moneytimekids.com/for-parents

Keep an eye out for # 4 in this series shortly.