But what you could do for them is get a prepaid credit card.  Prepaid credit cards are the best thing to teach your children about credit cards and the financial world in general.  If they have pocket money it’s a good idea to put it on their prepaid credit card and let them learn how to spend money on it like adults do.  The only difference is that they won’t be able to spend more than what’s on the card.

This can progress with your teenager when you think about it.  When they get their first job they may even continue to use the same format for their wages.  It’s much safer to carry a card on your person than to risk carrying around a load of cash, and with a credit card you can pay for goods and services without having to go to a machine to get out cash.

If your teenager learns to use a credit card from an early age (perhaps 13 is a good age) then they are much more likley to be responsible with a credit card when they become an adult; and let’s face it, many people could do with being a bit more responsible with credit couldn’t they?

This can train youngsters to manage their future credit responsibilities a little better; and also you.  If you sit down and work out what you have available to spend each month on this or that, and then put that amount of credit on the card, you can then pay for these goods and services with that card instead.  This allows you to get used to not using the card for anything other than what you’ve loaded it for.  It really is good money management training, and it’s worked for several of my friends.  There are also sometimes reward systems in place on some of these prepaid debit cards, so that gives you even more reason to try one out.  Most of them are free also, so you needn’t worry about spending more money just to teach yourself not to use credit in a irresponsible way.

The other more important thing about a prepaid card it that you can get one from around the age of 13.  This is good for two reasons.  One is written above and concerns the training advice, and the other is that you can prevent your teenage kids from carrying around cash, thus lowering the risk of them losing their money or worse.