My son is 15 next week. Has had own bank accout for couple of years, which weekly pocket money gets paid into, with cash card. He has a track record of using this money on things like Costa/snacks/sweets etc. Never really manages to save up for anything significant.
He does have occasional part time work and I ensure a proportion of any money earnt from this goes into a separate building society acct.
Anyway, we noticed (via husbands credit card statement) yest that since Christmas he's spent around £80 on add on games and extras for a game he plays on his Xbox. He didn't ask us if he could buy this stuff, he just used the card details that were stored on there. This has happened a couple of times before (phone games or xbox) and we've bollocked him, made him repay money etc and thought he was past this behaviour. (Hence feeling we could leave card details stored on there)
It really saddens and worries me as he's supposed to be saving up to replace his totally knackered phone, and now he's had to use his small amount of savings to repay us.
So even with the huge incentive of a new phone, that he desperately wants, he couldn't resist that 'in the moment' temptation to spend money (that wasn't even his to spend!).
This is very typical of him generally. If you offered him one chocolate now, or two chocolates later, he'd always opt for the instant gratification of one now. There's no ability to resist temptation/wait.
I worry about what will happen in just 2-3yrs time when he'll have access to things like credit cards, loans etc and how he'll cope with those... given his current aporoach.
Any ideas on how to help teens develop good money habits and attitudes gratefully received!
(As well as repaying what he's spent there will be a temporary Xbox ban being put in place too!)