Have you heard the mantra, A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned? That was drilled into my head as I was growing up. And it’s true!!
This mantra will help your kids become self-sufficient adults.
I sat down with a financial planner pal last week and we had fun crunching numbers. Our goal was to come up with a “method” that if we could teach our kids to replicate, that when they retire they will have over $500,000 in the bank – or even a whopping million!
A million dollars! And this is a guaranteed thing – it’s not the lottery. If my kids can follow these steps, they will have roughly $600,000 in the bank! If they double their efforts early on, they will have a million dollars when they retire. All with $3.
They won’t have to do anything fancy, no risky investments, I would just teaching our kids the importance of saving. If I can teach my kids the importance of paying towards their savings first, and then living off the rest, they will always have a cushion for when life happens!
So, how does it work?
How Can A Teen Become a Millionaire?
You need to save an additional $3 a week, every week. And on your birthday, increase your savings rate by another $3 a week.
At 14, your kids can mow neighbors yards. They also have very few living expenses. In our area yards are $30 a piece so that is the rate we began our calculator at.
If your child starts mowing yards, or babysitting, or washing cars, and at 14 is able to save $30 a week…
[This is totally doable, if they lived in our neighborhood, doing two lawns a week from March to October is easy to do, many kids mow many more yards each week.]
And when they are 15, they add three more dollars a week towards savings, and every year from there on out they add another three dollars a week to savings.
As your kids start gradually, they don’t realize the volume of what their saving is accomplishing! When they are 17 and they have their first minimum wage, part-time 15 hours a week job, and are making $7.25 an hour (give or take depending on your state) less than half is going to savings! They should still have enough to cover car insurance and gas. At 21, $51 a week is being saved. Let’s assume your kids move out when they are 24 (the average age for moving out is around 24). Assuming a 3.9% interest rate (CD Average over the last 20 years), they will already have over $27,000 in the bank!
Now, let’s double that! Let’s suppose your kids start saving, when they are 14, at $60 a week. That is saving two lawns a week! When they move out they will already have over $45,000 in the bank! And if they keep saving at a rate of an additional $3 a week, every year, by the time they retire they will have a million dollars in the bank.
One million dollars.
Stopping the arguments:
Yes, I know you are saying but we can’t make 3.9% in interest rate now. That’s true, but in 2000 interest rates for CDs were close to 6%, the rates flunctuate and they will go back up one day – start saving now! This is a low-estimate as it is very likely that as you gain in your savingings the interest rate will rise considerably!
And yes, this means that at 35 years old your child will need to be saving roughly $5000 a year. You might say to yourself, you can’t save that now, how could he… but look at your budget, can you save $3 a week? Could you do something today to earn $3 a week? Just start with your kids today, all of you saving $3 a week. It adds up!
You will get used to saving three dollars a week and next year it won’t be too hard to save another three dollars. Before you know it you will be saving a TON!
You aren’t 14 anymore, can this still help you? YES! Get started where you are! And if you don’t have enough to start saving think of ways that you can earn more income. That’s what I started doing, I am running a side business from home to help increase my income. You can too!
Want to become financially secure?
Check out the financial planner over on our partner site, One Crazy House.
The post How to Teach Your Teen to Become a Millionaire, with Just Three Dollars a Week. appeared first on Kids Activities Blog.
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