Teaching Tweens Responsibility in Time and Money

This was the first year I didn't create a "summer bucket list" with my two older kids. In years past we would fill up an entire poster board full of fun stuff to do like strawberry picking, movies nights, try a new recipe... you know the usual suspects. But this year they were more invested in how they can earn extra time on their devices than how they can make special memories with mom and dad.

Oh don't you worry, we will still be forcing all the usual activities on them, but I just spared them the craft session this year!

More and more everyday I am reminded staying connected with my tweens is only get harder and harder.

I personally believe summer should be FUN and a break from their usual organized school routine. I don't like to require school work out of my kids during the summer months, but that doesn't mean they can't learn, right?? Life is full of lessons they need to learn outside of the classroom anyways. So this summer I decided I would create a few daily projects for them where they could learn a few life lessons and skills.

My kids are fully aware of STUFF. They know the brands they want to wear, the cars they dream of driving, the places they want to visit, and on and on and on.... but they seem to lack the knowledge of how much each of those things cost.

With this daily project my objective was to show them

1. everything takes time

2. everything takes money

The basis of the project is outlined below. Fill free to print this off and use it as a guideline for your tweens or teens.

The overall view point looks something like this....

You must go to college or trade school, graduate, work, sleep, play, and vacation while earning enough money to pay for all your stuff. I gave them a very clean, straight forward outline (see below) and assisted them as they needed. They could choose any career path, however in order to make the project work it had to be something where they could find an estimated annual income online.

Here are the results of the project :

- They had FUN! It took them about 2 hours total and they enjoyed the research.

- They quickly learned that bills were not a one time thing. Unless they had enough money saved to pay for their house and car in full, they would have a monthly payment for those things each month. Not to mention everything else!

- They learned the more stuff they had or the more they wanted to do, the more money would have to be set aside in order to do that.

- At the end of the project my daughter determined kids would be free on the vacation she was planning, so she wanted kids. She was all excited until I told her she would have to have a larger vehicle (not the Mustang she had originally selected) and she would need to triple her monthly expenses. At that point she decided she didn't want to have kids.

This was a fun project and I feel my kids learned quite a lot about their future and what to expect time and money wise.

Have you done a project like this with your children? Do you think it helped them understand the value of both time and money?

#tweens #summer #lifeskills