Teens usually learn more from real life learning projects than from projects out of books. A bonus is that the teen doing the assignment sometimes also helps out the family by performing a useful service.
Here’s a project you can assign your teen that will be helpful to you. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but for the past year or so, at the end of each week the FDIC closes one or more U.S. banks. These closings aren’t widely publicized, but they’re happening. No one wants to find out their bank is one of the failed banks, especially once it’s too late to do anything about it.
Sometimes the banks are merged with other banks and the transition is seamless. But if that doesn’t happen, the bank is closed by the FDIC and you may have to wait to get your money back. The FDIC insurance fund is slowly being used up (although the more cynical among us figure the government will just print up a fresh batch of dollars once they run out.) The bottom line is that no one wants their money in a failed bank.
Fortunately, there are free online services that allow you to look up your bank and make sure it’s not headed for a Friday night closing. These services look at the financial situation of each bank and rate it based on performance and prognosis. We’ve been watching our banks for a few years, and actually dumped a couple when their ratings went down. One went from 4 stars (pretty good) to 1 star (poor) in less than two years. In this economic climate, it makes sense to protect your hard-earned dollars by keeping track of your bank’s safety rating.
Your teen can look up the family bank to see what kind of shape it’s in. Some free services come with reports that explain exactly what’s going on in a bank, and where problems may be looming. Most teens won’t want to read these reports, preferring just to look at the wrap-up. Those who do want to read the particulars may be candidates for careers in accounting or investment banking. In either case, reading the reports and looking up unfamiliar phrases would be a good learning exercise for teens and parents.
Since many banks are in trouble because they made too many imprudent loans, your teen should also take a look at your bank’s troubled asset ratio. The Investigative Reporting Workshop (American University School of Communication) offers a handy toolthat lets you look up any bank and see its current troubled asset ratio, how it compares to the national median, and its ratio history for the past two years.
Using these three tools will help your teen understand a bit more about banks while helping you decide whether your money is safe in your current bank. Your teen can look up this information for Grandma and Grandpa to make sure their banks are good ones, too.
Remember being in school the month before Christmas? How much actual studying got done?
Not much, as I recall. Between the kids’ excitement about Christmas being just around the corner, and the teachers’ need to get kids ready for the pageants and programs they were expected to participate in, little serious study was accomplished. (Not much was accomplished the rest of the year, but that’s another post!) Teachers often resorted to filmstrips (some of you may remember them) and worksheets related to Christmas. Not educational really, but it was the only way they could cope with wound-up kids.
I thought that being homeschoolers meant we could escape all the fuss and commotion and spend our time studying, with the added bonus of having time to incorporate various Advent activities into our daily plan.
Well…..it worked like that at first. Back when the kids were little and I was in full control of their schedules (ah, the good old days), we kept it pretty simple. Other than the annual Sunday School Christmas Program, with its practice sessions held at church, I was able to keep things on an even keel and we stuck to our schedule right up until the week before Christmas.
But we kept having kids, which meant more kids to shop for and wrap presents for. And our aging parents handed off responsibility for the Christmas celebrations to us, which meant big family gatherings for which we had to prepare (planning, grocery shopping, decorating….you know the drill).
As our kids got older, they started really getting into the festivities, which meant they were pretty distractible. It’s kind of hard to teach someone how to divide decimals when they’re dreaming of their wish list and you’re trying to decide between ham and turkey for Christmas dinner. Neither of you is really paying attention.
We soldiered on, but I sure wish I’d had the Internet back then. There are so many great free resources available now. I think if I’d had the Internet, I would have just used Advent and Christmas resources like the ones listed below to keep the kids busy until Christmas, figuring there’s always January for serious study.
I’m only homeschooling one now, and he’s still a bit fuzzy about time, so he doesn’t know exactly when Christmas will be here. But once we bring out the Christmas tree and decorations, he’ll be distracted by Christmas once again. I’d better get more toner for my printer so I can give him some of these printables to keep him busy!
It’s the true story of a young newlywed couple who has been married for less than two years, has no debt and has $50,000 in savings, all due to their joint effort to manage their money responsibly.
He has a college degree, and she has a one-year technical degree. Both worked their way through college and graduated without debt. Their goals for the future include a large family, a paid-off house and ample donations to missions. What a great example for all young people!
Money Matters is published by Crown Financial Ministries, the organization that Larry Burkett helped start. Listening to Larry Burkett’s Christian financial radio show helped encourage my husband and me as we worked toward becoming completely debt-free, a goal we achieved (not on our own, only with God’s help!) in 2002. Do check out Crown’s sitewhile you’re there.
This flies in the face of the common wisdom of the past 50 years that said you must have a college degree in order to get a decent job. That’s true in some career fields (who wants to be the patient of a neurosurgeon who hasn’t gone through college and medical school?) but it’s certainly not true for all fields.
The U.S. government makes projections about the growth (or lack of growth) in different career areas. You can find those numbers at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) website. Here’s the latest BLS projection of above average growth and above average wage occupations. It’s an interesting document. Note that the projected increases in job growth are for a ten-year period (2006-2016).
When reading it, keep in mind that a high percentage increase in a given career field doesn’t necessarily translate into a lot of jobs. Check the “Employment” column on the left side of the page for actual numbers (in the thousands).
For example, on the first page you’ll see that the rate of increase for “aircraft cargo handling supervisors” is a healthy 23.3%. But that only equals 1,000 new jobs over the next ten years. Not exactly a booming career field in a country of over 300 million people.
On the other hand, note that while the BLS projects there will only be 10.4% more truck drivers needed over the next ten years, that’s the equivalent of 193,000 new jobs.
Once you become familiar with the chart layout, note the “source of training” column on the right side of the page. Most of the jobs on the first few pages do not require a bachelor’s degree. As you go through the document, you’ll find more jobs that do require at least a four-year degree. There are quite a few.
However, only a few of them show the highest growth potential in both percentages and numbers. They include a variety of tech careers, social workers, jobs in education, and accountants. For those willing to earn more than just a bachelor’s degree, a career as a pharmacist, physician or surgeon would certainly be a growth area to consider.
Still, most of the above average growth jobs that require bachelor’s degrees don’t equal many jobs. For example, only 100 jobs per year nationwide are expected to open up for archivists, anthropologists and archaeologists, marine engineers and naval architects, and atmospheric and space scientists. So unless your child passionately desires to become one of those professionals, you might want to gently point him or her in another direction.
Since many of the degree-required careers have such low projected job numbers, today’s parents have to think seriously about whether a degree is even worth it, particularly if their children’s interests and abilities don’t necessarily fit with the jobs with the most openings and growth in the future.
Again, colleges and universities will not tell you that the degrees they offer do not necessarily translate into good jobs, especially in the working world of the 21st century. This is one area where parents and their teens really have to do the homework for themselves.
If the name “Jaycee Dugard” sounds familiar to you, it’s because it was all over the news a while back when Jaycee was found and rescued 18 years after being kidnapped when she was 11 years old.
Her kidnapper, a convicted sex offender, held her hostage all those years and also fathered two children by her. They are now 11 and 15 years old; they grew up believing Jaycee was their sister, not knowing she was actually their mother.
Jaycee’s strength and determination to care for her daughters as best she could has filled the family with admiration.
Both Angel and Starlit appear to have been educated solely by their mother – who herself never made it past the fifth grade.
Yet recent tests show Angel, 15, functioning close to the level of a high school senior – that is, a higher level than Jaycee was at when she was abducted.
Both girls are now receiving tutoring at the northern California home.
Now that’s what I call successfully homeschooling in adverse conditions, and it’s just more proof that homeschooling works.
It’s become an expectation in our society that most everyone, homeschooled or not, literate or not, will attend college. Whether a young person’s bent leans toward book-learning or engine-rebuilding doesn’t seem to matter. The important thing, we’re told, is that they go to college.
There’s an entire empire based on helping parents and teachers help students get into college. There are books and classes available, professional help can be hired to lead you through the application process….it’s a huge industry in itself.
But there are a few dirty little secrets about college. One in particular is purposely suppressed by colleges and universities. For all the fuss about getting into a good college, for all the money that’s saved up from the time the student is a toddler, for all the home equity lines parents must tap into, the fact is that only half of all college students actually graduate! And this is nothing new; it’s been true for 30 years.
(I worked in my college dorm office in the late 1970s. I vividly recall that officials overbooked all of the dorms at the large university I attended because they knew students would begin dropping out the first week. They didn’t want to end up with empty rooms.)
There are many reasons for such a high college dropout rate, the primary ones being that students can’t hack it or can’t afford it. But the bottom line is, half of all students don’t make it through college.
Of course, when a student drops out of college, he still has to pay for the time he was there. If he borrowed money to pay tuition and room-and-board (increasingly likely), that money has to be repaid with interest. So while he doesn’t leave with a diploma, he may well leave with a parting gift (as the old tv game show hosts used to call the loser’s consolation prize) of years of debt burden.
College brochures and websites are slick and packed with information, but they sure don’t mention that high dropout rate, do they?
We visited our hometown over the weekend and noticed that a couple of businesses we always shopped at have closed down. I looked them up online when I got home and found that they went out of business because of the bad economy.
One store owner, who ran a wonderful Christian book/gift store, blamed her business closing on people no longer using their credit cards. She said that in the past, people bought more items and paid with credit, but then they began paying cash and only buying little things. She and her husband decided to close down while they could still pay their bills.
As a business owner myself, I understand her feelings. But part of the reason our economy is in the bad shape it’s in is because people abused credit. They bought things they couldn’t afford and borrowed the money to do so, but couldn’t pay it back.
One of the projects in Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagersis designed to teach teens about handling credit cards responsibly. When I speak to homeschool groups, I’m often asked at what age people should begin teaching their children about credit. The book is intended for teens, but I tell parents if they really want to teach their children to handle credit responsibly, they must begin when their children are babies.
I’m not suggesting they get their baby a Visa card. But the root of credit problems is usually (I’m excepting medical emergencies here) an inability to delay gratification. Somebody wants a big plasma TV to watch the Super Bowl and they buy it on credit, never thinking about how they’ll pay for it. They don’t have the self-discipline to set aside money each week until they have enough to pay cash for the plasma tv.
How do you raise your children to become adults with the ability to delay gratification, to wait for what they want? You gently make them wait for what they want.
Don’t pick up the baby as soon as she makes a peep. Let her lay in her crib for a bit babbling and cooing before you pick her up.
Don’t buy your preschooler a toy he demands at the store. Let him wait for it until his birthday; he’ll appreciate it more, and he’ll have learned a little bit about waiting for what he wants.
Don’t buy your preteen the latest electronic device the day it comes on the market. Teach her to save up her allowance and birthday money until she can buy it for herself.
The child who learns he doesn’t have to have everything this instant is unlikely to become the guy who puts a $3000 television on his credit card a few days after losing his job. The adults who couldn’t wait until they were actually able to pay for what they wanted helped get us where we are today: in big financial trouble.
