GREENSBORO, N.C. — Heating the house, fixing the car, and paying the monthly health care premium. All these cost money and none of these are on your kid's mind.
“It's going to take your kids time to understand money, but then you also need to start putting it into practice, letting them help you pay some of the bills. They'll learn really quick if you let them do it,” said Gregg Murset, creator of BusyKid app and a financial educator expert.
Let them help figure out the tip at a restaurant
No, you shouldn’t spread out all the bills every month and have your kids pour over them with you, but Murset says when the bill comes at the restaurant, have your child help you figure out the tip. This allows them to see the cost of the meal, the cost of service, and the overall big picture when you take them out, it costs money.
Give them a chance to earn money by doing work around the house
Murset does this with his kids. He is also a proponent of having kids do work around the house for money. He says that paying kids to be responsible at home may rub some parents the wrong way, but without earning money and spending money, kids don’t learn how to make decisions.
“They worked for two weeks scooping dog poop and washing the car to buy the toy they want or the shoes they want and now they understand it. It's not what I call OPM, other people's money. It's easy to spend OPM all day long, but when it's yours and you had to work for it, it changes the way you think about things,” said Murset.
He created the app, BusyKid to help parents and kids get on the same page with money. The app is free to use, although there are options to pay for other features.
You can pay the kids on the app and you can even load that money on a debit card so the kids can learn how to manage it and spend it.