11 Financial Mistakes Teenagers Make

Helping teens is my thing.  And man do teens need help these days.  There are just so many more ways teens can stray, and shoot their future in the foot.  Take the case of this year's Heisman Trophy winner, Kyler Murray.  Within hours of receiving the most coveted award in all of college football, people were blasting him on Twitter for having homophobic tweets in his history.  Tweets he made when he was a teenager!  That's the world we live in...a place where haters are going to find a way to dim or completely turn off your spotlight.  But I digress...




Anyway, like I said above, teens these days need lots of help, and not just with their character and morals.  But also very much so with their financial habits.  While I do my best to make money matters interesting to this breed of teen at my YouTube channel, sadly, most of them would rather watch their favorite Vlogger do something crazy or idiotic.  So although I realize that many of you are adults, some of you may have greater influence with a teen than I do as a teacher.





Using compiled responses from some of my students, I've created a list of the ways teens misuse money.  These are, for many, bad habits that they need to break now if they're to avoid being a statistic, namely, just another member of the Have-nots.  Here they are in no particular order:

1)  Having a baby.  This is like a financial deathblow in the teenage years, especially if the teens involved belong to low-income families.

2)  Losing high school textbooks.  This will result in fines students have to pay before they're given their high school diploma.

3)  Buying and consuming illegal drugs regularly.  Wrong on so many levels...

4)  Buying an expensive and relatively new car.  This is a dream for many high school students, but because parents defray the costs of car ownership in many cases (paying for insurance, e.g.) teens don't fully grasp how expensive it truly is (loan, depreciation, etc.) to buy a new car.

5)  Upgrading a car.  Teens, especially the boys, love state of the art sound systems, carbon rims, racing mufflers, and so on.  Useless additions that only take money away from savings.

6)  Buying vapes or cigarettes.  Teens get hooked on these and getting them to stop is dang near impossible.  This becomes an expense many of them carry over into their 20s.

7)  Spending on online gaming.  In addition to the game consoles, individual games, and accessories teens want their parents to buy for them, now teens are asking mom and dad for credit cards to pay for gaming coins, and in-game purchases.

8)  Trying to impress a date with an expensive gift or outing.  The same can be said of teens in serious relationships.

9)  The senior prom becomes an event that seriously places families in a financial crisis.  Teens are spending way too much on a formality that is forgotten over time.  I barely remember my senior prom!

10)  Spending on fast food meals daily.  Some high schoolers are allowed to leave campus for lunch.  Others go straight to the nearest fast food joint right after school.  All the same.  The result is more unnecessary spending.

11) . Clothing, shoes, and other attire.  Teens are working after-school part-time and spending their money on clothing they don't need.  Why?  To look good at school, of course.


Well, I'm sure teens are finding even more creative ways to spend their money, and we as older people haven't yet caught on to their trends.  Main point is to help teens understand that their spending habits carry over to their adult years and effectively lead them into the Rat Race, or worse, homelessness.  Thanks for reading!

If your teen doesn't like reading, send them my way:
Video: 11 Financial Mistakers Teens Make!