The Teen Spending Awareness Challenge (You Just Need an Envelope!)

A simple teen money challenge that helps build awareness of one of the most important money habits: noticing how much they actually spend in total over one month.

Teens get money. Teens spend money.

They generally don’t think too much about the overall picture.

They don’t take the time to look at their TOTAL spending, or their TOTAL money that comes in over a period of time.

Money in, money out.

That’s kind of what we all did as teens too, right?

Yet there is SO MUCH awareness a teen can gain when they look at their total picture every once in a while.

That’s exactly what we’re going to do today. In one of the simplest ways possible.

The Teen Spending Awareness Challenge

I don’t recommend that teens budget their money for an entire month.

It’s just too far in the future to look into, and budgeting weekly makes a lot more sense when your money situation is ever-changing and developing.

However, today, I’m definitely recommending that your teen does THIS monthly thing with their money.

And doing it?

Will bring them a lot of money awareness about spending that they don’t currently have.

Step #1: Get an envelope and a pen

On the outside of the envelope, write the following:

• The starting date
• The date 30 days from now
• Estimate how much they spend in a month

Step #2: Gather all receipts until the end date

Use the envelope to stash all their receipts until that date. For digital purchases, have them write the total amount on the back of the envelope.

Step #3: Total up their total monthly spending

When that date hits, have them add up all their receipt totals. Write the total below their estimate 30 days ago.

Step #4: Answer these questions

• How much more or less than their estimate did they spend in one months’ time?
• Are they surprised by the amount they spent last month?
• Where did the money they spent mostly come from?
• Pretend they have that sum of money now sitting in a savings account, waiting for them. What’s one other thing they would like to do with it?

That’s it, folks.

Simple, but effective.

Personal finance isn’t all about budgeting percentages that we should be following and ways to earn extra cash.

It’s much more about awareness of what we’re doing with our money, what we could be doing with our money, and aligning our money moves as closely to our values and wants as we can.

Gaining this clarity around their spending will give them a BIG dose of awareness, and could change their money behaviors faster than taking a personal finance course could.