As adults we shop daily and very soon our children will become shoppers too for the rest of their lives. Becoming an effective shopper can be learnt and your children will appreciate it a lot if you do teach them. How well children use their money depends in part on what they’ve been taught. I believe the tips below will help you a great deal to achieve this.

• Let your child make a list of what he or she wants to buy. This helps to prevent impulse buying that can then lead to being short of cash for essentials. It also reduces the time spent in any store.  Remember the old phrase “Time is money”. This becomes truer as your child gets older and can use his or her precious time for better things than shopping all day.

• Having a shopping list is only the starting point. After a list has been done, your child needs to check for the right price by comparing to see which store offers the better deal. This is particularly possible now that a lot of stores sell online.

• Teach your child to learn about whatever they want to buy. There are always various brands of a particular product made by various manufacturers too. Encourage your child to ask questions. As a customer a child too is entitled to all the help he can get in store. Don’t let your child be intimidated into not asking for help with anything he or she wants to know about products in any store.

• Let your child save receipts. This is good for two reasons. If the item needs to be returned then the receipt will help to do that. Secondly, having the receipts all together will help to know how much he or she has spent over time.

• Another skill that is good for your child to learn is the ability to save money by buying items on sale or taking advantage of sales initiatives. For example, there are days that seeing a movie is half or even a third of the price. Children should learn what it means to take advantage of such. Also let your child learn how to hunt for bargains so they get the best at a minimum price.

Do you have any other tip that can help in teaching children how to shoo smartly? Let’s hear it

– Gbonjubola Sanni