Preparing Your Teens for College by Alex Chediak

Author:Alex Chediak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Social Issues
ISBN: 9781414390765
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: 2014-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

BIG EYES, SMALL WALLETS

Elizabeth’s story is all too familiar for college-aged young adults. According to Sallie Mae, only about one in three (35 percent) college students had a credit card in 2012. But two-thirds of card owners carry a balance instead of paying their bill in full on a monthly basis. The average outstanding credit card balance among freshmen: $642.[1]

We shouldn’t be surprised. Spending more than we have has become a way of life for many of us. Among Americans between the ages of 35 and 54, almost half (45 percent) held credit card debt as of 2011—to say nothing of those among us who purchased homes we ultimately couldn’t afford.[2] It’s easy for our eyes to grow larger than our wallets.

Maybe you’ve successfully avoided these hazards. If so, good for you. But most precollege teens have yet to learn, by experience, that diligence leads to riches (see Proverbs 10:4), that we should work hard and not be dependent on others (see 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12), and that the borrower is the slave of the lender (see Proverbs 22:7). These are lessons that either we can teach them the easy way or life can teach them the hard way.

I tell Daniel’s powerful story in Thriving at College. Daniel was a college student whose parents bailed him out of a $10,000 credit card debt. Years later he got into over $40,000 of debt—and this time had to pay it all off himself. He wrote, “I wish my parents wouldn’t have bailed me out the first time, because then I probably would have learned my lesson earlier and at a smaller cost.”

While protecting our children from serious, life-altering mistakes, we must give them increasing levels of financial responsibility as they grow up. If their leash is so short that minor failure today is impossible, the likelihood of massive failure in the future increases. Require that your teens take ownership of their relatively small financial actions, and unlike Daniel’s parents, let them reap the consequences for any missteps. Painful lessons in the school of hard knocks are long remembered, but only if the pain is allowed to do its work.

Require that your teens take ownership of their relatively small financial actions, and let them reap the consequences for any missteps. Painful lessons in the school of hard knocks are long remembered, but only if the pain is allowed to do its work.

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