Every year the sales ads around this time feature school supplies, but lately, I’ve seen a drastic increase in the amount of college gear advertised. Everything from chairs to bedding and even full sets of furniture are available through stores. As we walked through one store, my daughter asked, “Mom, do you really need to buy all of this stuff for college?” Of course, there are some items that are necessary, but there are many that are not. In fact, you could end up spending ½ year’s tuition on other items not needed.

What You Need

Before buying a wide range of items for college, here is what we did before spending anything. We contacted the college itself and spoke to someone who manages the dorms. What great information they provided to us. They told us exactly what was in the rooms and what was recommended purchases. We knew these were likely the bare minimum. We also found out there were a range of items not allowed (some of which line those shelves in the store!)

From there, we created a list of items that we thought were important for her to take to school and things that were just needed in general. Here is a look at some of the decisions we made, together. Keep in mind, my daughter and I agreed to split the costs on some items, since this was her official start to adult life. Who purchases the gear in your family is really up to you, but we agreed she would pay for some items.

• A Computer: One of the essentials today in college is a laptop. This is where we spent the most of our money. To save on the laptop, we invested in a quality product (with a warranty) and we shopped around extensively. We paid less attention to the name brand and more attention to the features and warranty. However, we did not overbuy.
• Bedding: This was an important one because although the school provided us with a mattress and the actual bed, she did not have bedding for it. We found some great bedding sets for teens, in the sales available. We also shopped online to find savings. Also, our college mattresses were extra long twins, which you need to buy special sheets for. Check on the bedding sizes.
• Chair: A desk and a traditional style chair was provided by the college in her dorm room, but she wanted to have a butterfly like folding chair to relax in. She also considered a beanbag style chair. We found some good pricing options available though, especially when we shopped at the local sporting goods store.
• Supplies: We purchased as many of the school supplies as possible before she headed to school. This included notebooks and pens, and all of the other small items she needed. The reason for this is that most college bookstores are incredibly expensive. We also found at least one of her college textbooks at a discounted price.
• Electronics: This is an area where we saved significantly. My daughter was taking most of what is already in her bedroom with her to college, such as her radio and television. She has an MP3 player as well. However, if you need to buy these items, shop the sales and keep all items small. There is not a lot of space in most college dorm rooms for bulky items.

Keep in mind that there are many things you may not need when it comes to buying college gear. Focus on the options you do need and then allow your child to pick out and pay for those items that he or she wants to take with them that may not be necessary or needed. The good news is that most of this gear can be inexpensive if you buy during the pre-school sales season.

Did you know that your children might qualify for some great discounts on things they pay for day to day? Student discounts have become a popular option for many businesses that are looking to develop a strong consumer base that could last for years to come. If your child is paying for things such as airfare, music downloads or museums at full price, he or she may be spending too much money.

How did this topic come up? During the warmer weather days, I often feel like I am being asked for money left and right for one or another thing. I do want my kids to head to the museum for a Tuesday afternoon or to have fun with their favorite download, but it can get expensive. Even if your child is paying for these costs themselves, it still adds up. Therefore, after being asked again about money, I decided to investigate some of the student discounts available.

Student Travel Discounts: Students who travel back and forth from college can save money by using student discounts. For example, the company STA Travel offers student discounts for trips around the world. This is a fantastic option for students who are studying overseas or who want to spend their summer break touring Europe.

Apple: If your child downloads music, uses computers or needs a new MP3 player, one of the best routes to go is through the Apple Store. Online and local stores offer discounts for college students. The program is called Apple Store for Education since schools get a cut of the savings, too. This is a simple and easy way to save money on electronics. Also, note that Dell and HP offer student discounts on purchases, too.

Microsoft: If your student is like mine, he has to have the most up to date software programs on his laptop but that gets expensive. I learned that Microsoft offers discounts on their Office products for a limited time after their initial release. All your child needs to do is to have an email address through the school (ending in .edu) to qualify.

Banana Republic: This popular clothing store among teens is a great tool for savings, too. You can even use the 15 percent discount that college students get on top of storewide sales. You will need to show your student ID card to get the savings.

BulkTix.com: This organization may allow your students to save significantly on movie tickets. You can often find promotional codes for the company too. You do have to buy tickets in bulk, which is a minimum of four tickets, but the savings adds up.

Finding More

This is a good place to start if you are looking for great student discounts. However, what you may not realize is that there are plenty of other options out there. Most of these are temporary offers and promotional codes, though. If you are interested in learning about the latest savings, visit StudentBuyingGuide.com where it is updated with the latest savings options available to your students.

Keep in mind that student discounts do change from time to time. You will either have to have a proper email address showing you are a student or you will need to show your student ID to quality for these discounts. Parents, let your kids buy these items in their name rather than trying to do it yourself. I found that it is easier and faster if my student’s name is on the payment slip rather than mine! Nevertheless, this is an excellent way to cut a few dollars off the cost of your day-to-day expenses, if you have a college student!

Most parents know when their child has become a teen, not by their age or their increasing size, but the increasing grocery budget. Teens go through all sorts of changes and their growth alone can signal the need for a larger grocery budget. Still, it is important to ensure your child is getting the food he or she needs, of course. But, what can be done about that grocery bill?

The subject came up the other day as I watched by older teen create a sandwich, filled with virtually every type of lunchmeat he could find, plus all of the condiments and veggies he needed. I did not think he could finish it, but within a matter of minutes, it was gone. I asked him if he thought he needed to consume that much at one time to which he replied, “I’m just hungry.”

Our conversation later progressed to the cost of food, though we are not the type to limit how much he can eat, I still thought this would make a great opportunity to learn about food. I learned that he also spent money grabbing snacks while he was “on the road’ to and from work. Have you ever thought about your teens and the amount of money they could be wasting on the grocery bill?

Is Money Spent on Food Okay?

I spend a good amount of time educating my children on money matters. Everything from credit cards to going to college to finding the best way to tell them that their expensive cell phone bills needed to stop. But what about food?

I decided that the first step was to teach my kids about the cost of food. I wrote out a list of groceries that I commonly purchase (including all of those sandwich ingredients.) I asked my son to list what he thought each item cost on the paper. Then, I gave him money and sent him off to the grocery store. What he found was that there was a great deal of difference in what he thought. With college quickly approaching, it makes sense to educate kids on how to eat right as well as how to spend money on food properly.

Saving Money

While educating kids on the cost of food is important, it is also very important to teach them how to save money while shopping. The next week, my son and I went to the grocery store together. We wanted to find ways to save and, led with his help, here are the tips we can share from our experience.

• Coupons are a no brainer. Why spend an extra dollar when you do not have to, says my son! Watching a television show, we clipped coupons and got to talk a bit too, one night.
• My son signed up for his own bonus card, offered by the grocery store as a way to save on purchases there only. He was shocked to learn that not everyone received the sale prices, that you needed to have a special card to get them.
• We also compared products properly. We looked at name brands compared to generics. We looked at the cost of frozen and canned products against fresh (though we are proponents of fresh living.) We did find a great farmers market for lower prices than our grocery store.
• We bought products based on needs and not all of the junk food that commonly costs more. Interestingly, my son said, “I really don’t need two bags of chips. Really, we can buy twice as much fruit for a bag of chips.”

It is these hands on experiences that I find are more fulfilling to me when it comes to educating my children. Although your experiences may be different, by simply including your kids in the education process you can help them to learn the true cost of what they are eating.

Recently, my children and I discussed the costs of entertainment and the fact that music seemed to cost much more than it did when I was younger. Music is music and the fact that downloading each individual song can be a dollar or more, really adds up when kids “have to have” every song they hear on the radio.

This got me into a conversation with my daughter, who is perhaps the biggest music lover in our family. She was on the computer, as was I and we were chatting about how expensive music is. Routinely she picks up gift certificates that allow her to budget her music downloads. For example, she gives herself an allowance of $20 per month to spend on songs. That is her spending money. To stick with the budget, she buys a gift certificate and uses that to download music online.

As she was entering her gift certificate information, she asked. “Is there any place that has discounts or cheaper music than this site? It really stinks that everything is so expensive.” I was not aware of how many sites were out there or what the actual costs were. Together we decided to do some digging to learn where and how kids can get music for a lower cost.

As we scoured the web, we did find some websites where you can get free songs and a variety of inexpensive music.

• Napster.com is one option. If you want to check out some of their free songs, go to www.napster.com. There are free commercial channels and other discounts, too. The company offers a monthly plan that starts at only $5. This company also offers subscription credits for MP3 players and has 10 million songs online.
• Rhapsody.com is another option. You have to compare all options available here, but from the looks of it, you can save a good deal by checking out their monthly plan. That plan starts at $10 per month.
• iTunes is perhaps the most common option and many people do not realize that they have other options outside of iTunes to choose from since iTunes is affiliated with the all-popular iPod. My daughter found out that you can easily download from other systems outside the iTunes store to your iPod, and sometimes it was less expensive to do so. The key is comparing options.
• Emusic.com is another option available to you. The company offers 45 free music downloads currently as a promotional offer for new subscribers but it also offers many more songs at half the price of iTunes.com, so the site claims. My daughter plans to try out this site next month, as she learns which of these sites will save her the most money while giving her the most songs.
• Amazon.com is the online store for everything and from my daughter’s research, it is one of the best options for downloading music to MP3 players, including iPods. What I did not realize is that it was simply to do this. There is a daily MP3 deal which could mean a whole album for just $3. There are best selling albums priced at $8 to buy and new releases as well. The company offers a regular supply of deals, too.

Since music is no longer simple to buy (I remember the days of simply recording music off the radio onto my cassette deck!) it makes sense to help your kids realize that there are ways to save. When my daughter told her brother about these savings, he spent about an hour downloading songs to his MP3 player. It is an easy way to save money but until we took the time to actually check out all of the options, we would not have known of these discounts.

It is amazing to me that teens and college kids do not realize the true cost of the entertainment they use. Many adults are happy to rent a movie once a week or have a meal out once in a while. Yet, with teens, entertainment is the main focus of each day. Whether it is movies or iTunes downloads, there seems to always be something.

This topic came up the other night with our family. My teens and I were watching television and each and every commercial that aired seemed to offer yet another way to be entertained. Interestingly, my daughter said, “Mom, how much do you think we spend on entertainment costs, things like movies and games?” The question came after I broached the subject of just how many avenues of entertainment today’s teen had. (I’m not that old, but there was a day when teens worked or studied rather than played on the computer.)

In any case, this got me to thinking about the opportunities available to teens today as well as how we could save money on them. We sat down and thought about some of today’s most popular types of teen focused entertainment and then we devised ways to help us save on those costs. I was shocked to see just how much money my kids could save.

However, this as a lesson for them, not me and therefore I wanted them to do the legwork and learn how to keep more money in their back accounts.

Music Downloads

Downloading music online or through cell phones, iPods and other methods can be an incredible cost. Each song costs as much as a few dollars apiece, depending on where you purchase it. Yet, there are ways to save. My daughter found out that by simply waiting, you can save money since older songs are less expensive. She also found that purchasing the CD at a store and then moving the songs to her iPod was less expensive (depending on where she purchased from.)

The Movies

Movies are a fun activity that most kids love but when you are shelling out $10 a pop for a movie ticket, soda and popcorn, which adds up quickly (especially when they end up paying for friends, too.) After taking some time to consider all options, my son learned that to save money on movies you could do any of these things:

• Go to the early show. As he put it, “If you go before five, you can save $5 plus you have time to go out to eat or to hang out with friends afterwards.”Check out the deals. Some of the local theaters offered discounts online. You would not know it if you did not look for it.
• Check coupons and discount books for movie ticket discounts.
• He found that if he invested a few extra minutes in drive time, that he could go to what he calls the “cheap theater” which offers bargain days.

He was proud to show these discounts to friends!

Renting Movies

Renting movies is great for those lazy Sunday afternoons, but only if you do not have to pay a great deal. My son was discussing with me the biggest problem. It wasn’t that he was spending a lot renting the movie but he would fail to return them and racked up late fees. Therefore, he decided two things. First, he could visit the new type of rental kiosks that are available locally and rent a DVD for just a dollar. Even if he was late, it was only a $1 more. In addition, he says after he finishes the movie he is automatically putting it back into its case and setting it under his keys to take with him. These are easy ways to save money for him!

Renting Games

My son is a bring video game player but he has always had to buy the expensive games he wants. Some can be as much as $60 for a single game he will likely finish in a few days. When he asked how he could save here, he had to do a bit of digging. He found these tips:

• Buy used games instead of new.
• Rent the game instead of buying it. He can finish in the five days the rental location offers.
• Do consider online rentals, which are often less expensive.
• Trade games with friends instead of both buying the same game.
• He was able to play a new game the other day that cost him about $10 to buy used.

Concert Tickets

While my older daughter loves music, she hates to pay for the costs of concert tickets. Unless you are lucky enough to win tickets through a radio show, what other methods can you use to save? She found out that she can save by checking if there are college discounts for students. Also, coupons are often available that can help to cut the costs. And, she says, “You know, some of the local bands that play in clubs are really good. I would rather pay $10 to get in to the club instead of $100 on tickets to see someone from the balcony.”

As you can see, challenging your kids to find ways to save money can really help all involved. The key is to find out what all of your options are and then to encourage your kids to find discounts. After all, it really only benefits them unless you are the one handing out the money!

Summer vacation used to be something that we did just as a family. It still is something we do, though we do so frugally whenever possible. However, this year, I was approached about a summer vacation with friends, meaning that my son wanted to take a trip with his buddies this summer. Knowing that he is growing up, I had to weigh the overall moral elements of allowing him to do so. Then, I got to thinking about the cost and I realized that this could be a great teaching moment for him.

A vacation away from home means that mom and dad are not going to be available to pay the bill for everything happening. It also means that he is going to have to earn the money to take with him. Here’s how I approached the conversation with him.

“Son, I would love for you to see various areas of the world, but we do need to talk about the costs, who is paying for the trip and how much money you will need.” After a bit of back and forth, we agreed that it was a trip he would need to pay for. So, the first question was, how is he going to do that?

Earning the Money

We both agreed that while he had money in his savings account, which was not the best way to go to pay for this vacation. Further, we noted the importance of avoiding putting a vacation on a credit card. There is truly no benefit to doing so because of the cost of the interest. So, he would have to actually work to earn the money to go on vacation. He has a job that pays well but would need to cut back on his other spending habits, put more money into his vacation fund and he would need to work more hours on the weekend to do this.

I wanted to stress to him that while going on vacation is a lot of fun, it does cost a good deal of money. He would have to earn that break away from home. In order to keep his vacation fund away from his other money, we set up a prepaid debit card that he could transfer the funds to. That way, he would not be carrying around cash with him.

Estimating Costs

The second step to this process was estimating what it would cost for him to go on vacation. This is where the costs added up. I agreed to allow him some freedom to spend with his friends (along with some other, non money related rules) as long as he could afford to do so. We sat down with paper and pen and started to list costs:

• Gas: he would be taking a car trip several hours away. The cost of gas was estimated first. We figured out his share would be about $100 for gas alone.
• Accommodations: As a teen he does not need (nor want) luxurious accommodations, but he needed a safe neighborhood to stay in with his friends (fyi, there are parents going, but he has to pay his own way.) With taxes, we found an option that would cost about $55 a night.
• Food: Food costs were hard to determine since we were unsure just where he would be eating. However, we calculated that between $50 and $80 per day for him alone would be plenty, with extra for snacks and car rides.
• Attractions: Luckily, there were very few attractions in the area he wished to enjoy, but as this was a trip, he needed to make sure he put away money for this just in case. We estimated $20 to $40 per day.
• Spending Money: This is where he and I both disagreed. He said he would not buy a lot of “stuff” while I said that he would likely spend more than he was planning. We settled on $50 a day as spending money.

If your teen is considering a vacation away from home, be sure to sit down with them and work out these particular costs. His vacation seems inexpensive simply because he is not going anywhere too far away, nor is he going to be in an area with numerous tourist attractions. Nevertheless, unless you factor out the cost like this, your teen will have no idea how much it costs to vacation.

Each year we like to take the kids on a vacation. It gives us a chance to all be together without all of the running around and the hectic schedules. It also allows us to see different places of the country and even the world. This year, we did as we usually do and got together to talk about where we would like to go on vacation.

My son and daughter had two different opinions about where we should go. Then, my son said, “You know, let’s do both!” Although we would love to, the cost was not something that I wanted to think about, until my son suggested that perhaps we could find ways to cut back on our spending on vacation so that we could really do more. Intrigued, I asked them each to work with me on creating a list of ways we can save money on vacation. What a great learning experience for them (one that I did not even come up with myself!)

Here’s our list of 20 ways to save money on vacation:

1. Research first. If you take the time to learn about all of your options in hotels and flights, you will save money. It only takes a few minutes to research the options you have that could save you money.
2. Drive when you can. As a parent of kids that hate long car rides, this one impressed me. After comparing options online and the cost of gas, it would be less expensive to drive in our situation. Take the time to factor this out to determine which the more expensive option is.
3. Pack light. If you do fly, you do not want to bring with you numerous checked bags or carryon luggage. Numerous airlines have raised their fees for luggage and that could mean a costly investment.
4. Learn about public transportation. If you usually rent a car, check out the options in public transportation and hotel transportation available. Some hotels now provide guests with a shuttle to and from area attractions. It could be less expensive to do this than to rent a larger vehicle (which we usually need) for a week.
5. Set up a budget. This one was my idea, but I had the kids help to create the budget. This way, everyone knew what we were going to spend money on and what we were not going to spend on. They were shocked by the totals!
6. Do not use credit cards. My kids know all about credit cards and the costly fees associated with them, but I wanted to explain this further in terms of a vacation. It is not a need, but a want and therefore, our rule is to have the money upfront before spending it. We talked about interest and even used an online calculator to show the cost of interest on our vacation.
7. Consider a condo. We found condos priced about the same as hotel rooms, but they had a kitchen in them. Breakfast, at least, could be prepared there instead of eating out.
8. Stay a bit away from the center of it all. If you stay right in the heart of the city, you will pay more. Depending on the transportation options available to you, you should consider staying 10 to 15 miles outside the city.
9. Choose inexpensive activities like seeing nature. That sums it all up!
10. Bring your own drinks. Rather than buying drinks in parks, find out if they will allow you to bring them in. That saves you a considerable amount of money.
11. Consider packages available through your hotel. Some hotels allow you to get discount tickets to parks, mini golf or other amenities.
12. Call the hotel and inquire about a bounce back offer, or an offer to come back to a place you stayed previously. You will need to haggle a bit, but many hotels will offer you an excellent rate.
13. Avoid being hungry. If you leave your hotel hungry and step into a park hungry, chances are good you will pick up candy, sweets and junk food easily. Have a full meal before you enter any park.
14. Bring gear from home. If it is possible to do, bring your swimsuits, hiking gear, camping gear, etc with you rather than renting these items or buying them on vacation. My daughter said, “I hate renting surf boards!”
15. Do not eat “fancy” every day. In other words, go for those lower costing locations and family diners before you invest in expensive restaurants each day. Restaurants often make up a huge portion of the budget.
16. Live within your means and say no. This one I can up with. In other words, if you cannot afford to do so, then do not.
17. Avoid buying souvenirs. “They just sit in the closet when we get home anyway,” says the son!
18. Go as a group and save money. Sometimes a group of people who are all pitching in will be less expensive than traveling with just your family. Make it a family gathering.
19. Tune up your car before you leave. This could help you to save gas on the road, especially those tires.
20. Book in advance. Never arrive at the location and then look for a hotel room. That costs too much.

The bottom line is that you can definitely save a lot of money on your traveling if you take the time to look for options.

Many teens who work part time will have the right of a tax refund from overpayment in income taxes. Filing that first tax return can be exciting as getting a larger chunk of money back from the government is always a good thing. However, what should your teen do with that money? Since refunds go out faster and faster these days, now might be the time to sit down with your child and discuss how they will use the refund they get.

Tips that Work at Any Age

If you are getting a tax refund this year, it may be a good idea to talk to your teen about how you spend the money. Consider some of the options you have:

• You spend it: short and sweet, you use it to have a great weekend, buy something for around the home or you use it to purchase something else you want. After all, it is unexpected income, not in your budget.
• You use this chunk of extra money to pay down debt. You know that paying off a credit card or putting the money towards a car loan will save you money in the long term.
• You stash the money away in a savings account for a rainy day. You never know when you might need some extra money to pay for an unexpected emergency.
• You put the funds away to start a sinking fund for a larger expense you might have in the future, such as investing in home improvements, a new vehicle or college costs.
• You put the funds into an investment where it not only will be available to you but also will grow for you over time.
• You give some or all of it away to charity. It is something you believe in doing.

The good news is that any of the above options is a good choice, if it is the right one for you. The same is true for your teen or college age student. They need to make a decision about what to do with these funds on their own. In addition, they have the same options you have.

Encouraging Good Decisions

Perhaps you have a college aged child or an older teen. They have accumulated a significant refund. Before they spend it, sit down with them and have a conversation about the money. This is a conversation we have had recently.

After talking about a tax refund as well as what it means; we talked about our options, both my child’s and my own, because I wanted him to know that I, too, had to make the right decision. Here are some of the important points you might want to make with your child, too.

• It is not free money. This money, like any other paycheck, is money that comes from hard work. It took a year to earn it.
• Spending some extra money on ourselves is just fine, especially when doing so betters our lives. My son wanted to upgrade his computer to have better connectivity.
• Making the money work is sometimes the best option in the end. At least some of the money needed to go to investments that would help the money to grow. Savings accounts, Certificate of Deposits or even retirement planning were options we discussed.
• Putting money aside for college or a new vehicle was a good option, too, especially since this would make it easier to buy textbooks or to pay for meals away from home.
• Paying down debt makes the best sense. If a credit card has a balance of $400, for example, with an interest rate of 10 percent (and many more are much higher), it makes better sense to pay off this amount than to put the money into a savings account earning 1 percent. We used an example to show how simple this savings could be.

At the end of the day, what your child does with his tax return is up to him. However, by giving your child options, you put him or her in more control of the way they use their money.

I often wonder if I have the letters “ATM” stamped on my forehead. It seems that over the course of a few days, I am handing out money on a regular basis. We do need to spend money, but there are ways to cut down on the costs you have.

It is critical to talk to your kids about the ways that money is spent. There are often small things that we purchase on a day-to-day basis we do not think about, but they do add up. Challenge your kids to find ways they can save money without feeling the pinch. This can be a fun challenge for your family to do together.

Each person can easily keep a small notebook or binder to carry with him or her. Whenever they find themselves reaching for a dollar or making a small purchase, encourage them to forgo the purchase and instead write down the amount they would have spent in their notebook.

Where Your Money Is Going

Where is your money going? If you are the type of person that has a budget laid out at the beginning of the month but you cannot figure out why it does not match up, it is in small things that you are losing money. However, the question is where.

Here are some easy, often times unnoticeable ways that you can save hundreds of dollars per month.

1. Stopping for coffee: If you stop at McDonald’s for a cup of coffee each day, five days per week, that amounts to between $10 and $20 per week or $40 to $80 per month. If you add something to that, it is even more.
2. Extra snack in the checkout aisle: Just spending a few dollars on a candy bar or a bag of chips really does add up, especially if you do this often, or for each person you are with. That bottle of soda and a candy bar may cost as much as $5 per person.
3. Eating out: This is a topic no one likes to hear about, but if you stay in for dinner just one time more often per week, you could save between $40 and $80 per week doing so, depending on the size of your family and the amount you normally spend. If you go out to dinner three times per week, cut down to two to see a great improvement in your budget.
4. The electric and gas bill: Turn down your thermostat in the winter to 66 to 68 degrees and you are likely to see a substantial improvement in your monthly bill, as much as $50 to $100 depending on how much you use it. If you are chilly, wear a sweater. The same is true in the summer. Raise the thermostat to 74 to 76 degrees instead.
5. Bag the lunch: At some schools, like our own, kids pre purchase lunches by ordering from a menu. It may seem like just $2 to $4 per day, but when you add this up over the course of the month, plus multiply it by the number of kids you have, it really adds up! A well planned out brown-bagged lunch instead may cost a fraction of what you are already spending, especially if you get creative.
6. Extras at the store. Ask your kids about this one if they shop on their own from time to time. How many items do you pick up and put into your shopping cart that are extras? An extra would be anything that is not on your shopping list you add after arriving at the store that is not part of your menu. This is often an easy way to save hundreds of dollars each month for some families.
7. Picking up snacks at the gas station: I like to use my debit card at the pump so I am not tempted to go into the actual convenient store as I end up picking a few things up as I do so. Ask your kids if they do the same, if they are filling up their car with gas. Chances are good this is a good way to save a few dollars at each fill up.
8. Drinks at school and work: How much does a bottle of soda cost at your child’s school? How many times per day do they purchase that soda to drink while in class? How about work situations where taking a bottle of juice, water, soda or something else to work with you adds up to several dollars per day. Just like the coffee on the way to work, this is an easy way to save money. Bring a bottle of something from home, rather than out of a machine. You will save half, if not more.
9. Rent instead of go to the movies: Have you seen the cost of a movie ticket today? My kids love to watch movies but we rarely go to a theater to do so. After factoring in the cost of the ticket, popcorn and sodas, the cost can be as much as $15 to $20 per person. However, you can rent a movie for a dollar at some places or even head to the library. Make some popcorn at home and have a family night for less than $5.
10. Club hopping is expensive: Some teens love to go to the clubs, for dancing and for just hanging with their friends. The clubs make a big profit from charging entrance fees, sometimes as much as $10 to $20 or more per person. Teens often go from one club to the next on the same night. As you can imagine, this is an expensive way to hang out with your friends.

What is your expense? What are you spending money on you know you do not need to? Challenge your kids to avoid these expenses for a week or a month. Then, take that saved money and invest it.

It could be video games. It could be clothes. That’s what even the conservative marketers claim teens still spend most money on, divided along the expected gender lines. I can hear every teen I know saying I’m stereotyping. But that’s not the point. You know when your teen has an addictive shopping habit. And it’s important to break those habits.

It’s not enough to just lay down tough ground rules, such as telling them they can only spend their allowance or side job money, but you’re not going to keep giving them extra money. That’s treating the symptom, not the disease.

I’ll use clothes shopping for the following habit breaking program because that sort of shopaholism goes far beyond teens; it’s endemic in our culture. But the advice does work for any addictive shopping habit.

The step by step process may sound odd for the first couple of steps, but bear with me, there is a method to it.

1. Tell your fashionista that for two months, no clothes shopping. That includes accessories–hair thingies, purses, etc. Personally, I also strongly recommend including makeup in this. Your teen will be devastated, so hurry up and move on to telling them about #2 and 3.

2. They can spend their money on anything else. Normal allowance or side job money rules apply–for instance, if you insist they save a portion of their money, they must still do that.

3. Reward them for stopping the rituals that feed the habit. Let me explain. A shopaholic will be constantly looking at clothes, in magazines, online, at the mall. The key to breaking the habit is ending the focus. So, for each week that they don’t read fashion magazines, or window shop either online or at the mall, double their allowance. This is a critical step. Be encouraging and kind here. It may be very hard for your teen to do this. Have other magazines around for them to look at; magazine flipping can be a way they’re used to relaxing.

4. Encourage a new physical or artistic activity. Introduce running, yoga, a new team sport. Breaking an old habit is made easier by being involved.

5. After the first two months, allow your fashionista to buy one piece of clothing in the third month. Just one. Your teen’s perspective will have changed. They will probably make a more careful selection, something they actually want instead of something they’ll wear once and throw into the pile. Talk to them about it, and what the process is like. Don’t be an I Told You So. Ask how it felt to purchase that one thing. Talk about how much more money they’ve had for other interests, such as concert tickets. Keep up the bonus money for no ritual habits like fashion magazines.

6. For the fourth month, tell your teen that one purchase per month is the new norm. And yes, buying a lip gloss counts as one. No more bonuses for staying away from the ritual stuff, unless you think your teen is still really battling the habit.

Three months can break a lot of habits. It will definitely change attitude, awareness, and behavior. Some teens may be more obsessive, and, say, save their money, and then take that first shopping opportunity in the third month and buy something outrageously expensive.

Let it go. See if they really love that thing they bought. If they do, great, they’ll know the value of saving up for something really good, versus a lot of impulse, addictive buying. If they don’t love it, they’ll learn that they were acting out and the only person it negatively affected was themselves.

Do try to be patient and positive. Even if you find the shopping habit distasteful, it is always hard to break a habit. Talk to your teen about how important it is not to be a slave to shopping. It’s not just important in terms of their relationship to money, but their emotional health as well. Ask how they feel, a lot.

Good luck and please send on any feedback from the teens themselves, if they go through this process.

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