Teenagers

“The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.”~Quentin Crisp

A parent writes to the Consumerist about his teenage daughter…

My lectures about financial responsibility appear to have failed: yesterday she charged $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 at the drug store. That's 2,000 times more than the national debt, which is a paltry 11 trillion.
The ever-vigilant folks at VISA added a $20 "negative balance fee," and have
suspended the card. When I called, they said that there was a "system
problem," and that the "help desk was working on it."

Bottom Line

Always check the receipt when you purchase something and keep it until you see the correct charge appear on your bank statement. In an odd case like that above, the company should waive the “negative balance fee” once their error is fixed. (Followup stories reveal that many people were hit with a 28 Quadrillion charge from Visa Buxx on the same day. The Visa computer used spaces to pad the value instead of zeros. The spaces were translated as a numeric amount.)

Kudos to the father above for teaching his child about finance through a parent controlled debit card. It’s good to learn that spending has limits and that everything must be paid for.

It is never easy teaching life skills to teens and getting them to listen. I just learned that my younger cousin (a professional social worker for troubled teens) is now a grandmother thanks to her 15-year-old daughter. Personally I’d arrange a shotgun wedding but my cousin wants the marriage to wait until her daughter finishes high school. Since the boyfriend is older and about to enter the military, I’d recommend marriage (for the health coverage) and a GED degree (General Education Development). What do you think?

More than 750,000 teenagers become pregnant each year, and about 445,000 give birth.
10 Tips for Parents to Help Their Children Avoid Teen Pregnancy