Banking Exposure to kids

Piggy banks were the earliest gifts which kids got as part of their first exposure towards handling money. Children were taught to manage expenses with the money available helping them to prioritize the money that they get. Millennials got further exposure to banking products as their parents arranged for educational loans.  Also, banks understood that the customers who are tapped early are likely to stick to them for greater part of their banking relationship. Minor accounts with linkage to parent accounts and suitable products were introduced as part of banking strategy.

Now banking is included as part of curriculum for kids. Kids are taken to banks and various forms (savings/current) and their meanings are explained. Also, the process to obtain demand drafts, usage of ATM is explained to school going kids to create awareness. For the teens, the concepts of taxes, fees, mutual funds, are introduced so as to enable them to deal with these during later stages of their career/life.  

While real money for educational purposes may be prone to risk, virtual management of money for educational awareness is springing up and is a welcome initiative. Gamification apps, reward points, tracker for spending the money are some of the pointers where kids can benefit. Some of the practices like Save-First-Spend-Rest can be experimented so that the children get to understand the benefits of spending money responsibly and value for money are taught in early stages. Kids need to be made to understand the value of money and mindless spending only leads to disappointment later.

While exposing children to money is a welcome sign, parental control on the same is definitely a necessity.  Also, now-a-days wallets are linked for almost all kinds of apps dealing with e-commerce, it is mandatory to ensure that accounts are linked appropriately with suitable parental controls. Exposing kids to money will definitely instill a sense of responsibility to kids to enable them to handle it in a mature manner at later stage. Such commitments connected to kids at early stage will reap benefits for a life time.