For many, August means back to school. This month is a good time to talk about money management with your kids. A big part of growing up is the shift away from Mom and Dad handling their kid’s money to a young person accepting responsibility for his or her own financial needs and wants. For parents, it takes time, patience and wisdom to assist children making the transition into their adult roles and responsibilities. Many of you have insisted that your kids have jobs and pay some of their own expenses throughout high school, which will give them an advantage if they will be managing some or all of their expenses in college. However, if that has not been the case, here are some suggestions to help your kids (and you!) adjust to college life without breaking the bank.

Be sure that you help your child establish a budget and then work through adjusting it until he or she has a good understanding of where the money is going. Set up a bank account. In our family, we have two accounts for our daughter who is out of state in college; one account is in the city where she is in school and the other is here in Tuscaloosa —this makes it easy for us to put money in her account.

Stewart Welch of the Welch Group has created a worksheet to help college students learn to keep track of their income and expenditures (at right).

When first sending your child out into the word to manage on their own, it’s important to establish exactly who is responsible for which expenses. You should also review your kid’s budget on a regular basis. If your children are successful at managing their money, you might want to consider rewarding them with money to invest in a mutual fund. Then you can teach them how to track their investment in the paper or online by going to www.morningstar.com.


Article by Babs W. Hart originally appeared in
The Tuscaloosa Business Ink.