How to Set Age Appropriate Financial Goals For Kids and Teenagers Ranging From 5 - 13 Years Olds

One of the most important aspects of teaching teens the power of money is realization that specific money concepts should be introduced to your kids and teenager as specific ages. Introducing some concepts to your kids to early usually leads to frustration and anger with kids and parents.

Below is an outline of age appropriate strategies and money skills kids should understand.

During the years between 5 - 10, kids are beginning to get a glance about the world around them. Here is a brief overview of some of the experiences many kids should have regarding money between the ages of 5 - 10 years old:

- Indentify money (dime verse nickel verse a quarter)
- Carry money to pay for lunch at school.
- Learn to comparison shop. Purchased books at the school book fair or at a home school event.
- Have an allowance. Learn the habit of working for money.
- Understand it take money to buy things. From the toys at the toy store, the candy at the grocery store or stuff on TV commercials, it takes money to buy things. Nothing is free.

Between the years of 10-13 here are some milestones to guide you to help educate your pre-teenagers about money:

- Open a saving account. Of course, you can open a saving account when they are younger, but if they don't have a saving account, consider opening one for them during these years. You can open a saving account with as little as $20. A savings account will teach them about the banking system.

- Shown them the saving account statement. Most banks send out statements for savings accounts once a year. When this arrives, this is an excellent opportunity for you to remind your child about the money they are saving for the future.

- Increase the amount of the weekly or monthly allowance. An allowance isn't a right of passage many kids think it is. As you increase their allowance make sure to increase the amount of their choirs they do around the house. During this time your kids will begin to understand the value of working and the true meaning of earning money.

- Open up a brokerage account. This will introduce kids to the basics of investing. You can open up a brokerage account online within a few minutes.

- Open a DRIP account. DRIP stands for Dividend ReInvestment Program. This is a great way to buy stock directly from the company at zero or very low cost. In addition, your child will also receive quarterly and annual statements from the company you investment.

Setting age appropriate financial goals for your kids and teenagers will help them to become money smart teens and successful throughout their life.

3 GPS Kid and Teen Tracking Systems

Here are two very good GPS child tracking systems and an additional child monitoring tool to help keep your kids safe. You can think of this as your introduction to tracking kids with GPS and continue to do additional research from here. You should make sure that you know what you need before purchasing any GPS kids tracking system.

T-Trac XS - This GPS device was created specifically with teens in mind. It is geared towards older teens as it is an automobile GPS tracking device. This will help you to know exactly where your teens are when they take the car for the night, or any time for that matter. If there's trouble you'll be able to get there much faster, or see that help can get there, because you'll know where your children are at all times. Besides that it also helps keep track of your teens with a couple other special features.

If you only need tracking during certain times of the day you can set this GPS device to do that and conserve the battery life. Maybe your teen only takes the car for school and you want to make sure they come right home, so you can use this to track only during the school hours and immediately before and after. There's also a geo-fence option on this tracker that lets you specify a certain range for the GPS device. If the car goes outside that range an alert will be sent to you.

Another feature of the T-Trac XS is the ability to set the GPS unit to alert you if the car it's installed in exceeds a certain speed limit. No more need to worry about speeding teens since you'll know if they exceed the speed limit you've set for them.

Whereifone GPS Locator Phone - This is a good alternative for younger teens; a cell phone with GPS built in. It's small, cool and fairly cheap so you won't have to break the bank to get a GPS kids tracking unit. It also comes in a variety of colors so you can get the one that your child likes to help keep them happy. The unit is quite accurate and can locate a person within several yards, even if they are in a highly populated location. As far as cell phone GPS units go this is a great choice.

Cell Phone SIM Card Spy - This is not a GPS unit, but is a complimentary device used to track your child or teens cell phone use. It basically makes available to you all the information stored on the cell phones SIM card including text messages, incoming and outgoing calls. In these dangerous times we sometimes need to keep an eye on the things that our children may not consider as dangerous because they don't have enough experience to know about them. I don't advocate spying on your children, but in some circumstances it may be necessary to keep them safe.

Cell phone monitoring and especially GPS tracking are both great ways to ensure the safety of our children. It can keep them from trouble and harm while giving you the peace of mind to be able to relax when they are out of your sight.

Teasing, Taunting and Texting - Middle School Teens and Tweens

Teasing, taunting and texting! That pretty much describes young teens and tweens. Middle school and Junior High are tough years for most adolescents. Their peers are worse than vultures on the playground. Parents don't understand and teachers have no mercy.

It's a tough life to be 12, 13 or 14. Just ask them.

Characteristics of the early teenage years

Middle school and junior high students are growing more rapidly than they have at any time since infancy. They vary in size tremendously, a fact which directly relates to their feelings about themselves. It should also be noted that this period is a time of great hormonal surges, resulting in unexpected outbursts of giggles, tears or pimples depending on the circumstances.

Self-criticism and uncertainty are reflected in their talk about themselves and others. Anger is common and may grow out of feelings of inadequacy, fatigue, rejection and uncertainty. He may come home after scoring three goals and being the hero of the hour to face the chore chart and the kitchen floor and react with anger, tears and slamming of doors.

Tears of anger, fear or happiness

At this age, adolescents have a tendency to take internal conflicts and externalize them into conflicts between themselves and their parents. We need to teach our children and ourselves to acknowledge feelings and recognize them. It is okay to feel angry about having to scrub the floor, but the commitment to the family must be kept anyway.

If parents become permissive under pressure, it is like issuing a teenager a license to misbehave. When we waiver in our commitment to family rules, it takes away respect from both the parent and the child. Allowing a child to avoid responsibilities encourages them to continue this unacceptable behavior. Further, allowing them to "win" can actually reduce a young person's self-esteem, because it implies that whenever enough of a fuss is made, they can get out of their share of the work.

Be firm and kind with family rules

Teens may feel good temporarily if they are allowed to get away with whatever they choose, but they usually don't feel good about it for very long. If they sense their parents don't respect them, they will find it hard to respect themselves. Thus, permissiveness breeds disrespect and discouragement and invites rebellion and chaos into family life.

Teasing, Taunting and Texting

By giving our teens and tweens some space to grow into the kind of person they are destined to be, it will make for more harmony in the home and on the school ground.  Just pick your battles.