Help your teen build sound financial skills

For most teenagers, spending money seems to come naturally. But that doesn’t mean they know how to manage it. In fact, the JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy recently found that only 10 percent of 12th-graders could satisfactorily answer questions about personal finance. Some couldn’t balance a checkbook. Yet many high school students have, and regularly use, credit cards – with little or no understanding of how interest rates, skipped payments or continual high balances can impact a person’s financial future.