Don't leave Children & Pets in Cars

I've written before about the dangers of leaving children and pets in hots cars. It can be fatal. Some adults think this is OK so long as they leave the car running with the air conditioner on. Here's what can happen in that scenario ...

A grandmother left her 13-year-old granddaughter alone in the car with the keys while grandma went shopping at a Michigan mall. The teen decide to try her hand at driving. She hit a utility pole and a few parked cars before eventually nestling the vehicle sideways between two other parked cars.

Both the girl and the grandmother may face criminal charges.

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

Preparedness Tasks for Teens

"Teenagers are like people who express a burning desire to be different by dressing exactly alike." - Anonymous.

Wow, I'm looking at the blog, Code Name Insight, and thinking, "Where does he get the time each day to create items of such quality?" This is what I wish my blog could be like.
The article that first drew my attention was 11 Preparedness Tasks for Teens.
For your typical teen, adulthood is a disaster waiting to happen. Here are some recommendations from Code Name Insight:

• Give them a month's worth of allowance at one time to teach about budgeting and making money last.
• Have them take a self defense class.
• Require Chores to teach them responsibility.
• Encourage them to take on a big project or do something by themselves like traveling overseas, on the subways or camping overnight in the woods.
• Cook dinner for the family once a week.
• Learn basic needs like ironing, washing, shopping the sales, etc.
• Creating a little business to lean entrepreneurial skills
• Participate in community education classes like First aid, wilderness survival, swimming, etc. Learn the joy of learning.
• Volunteer. Learn to help others.

Bottom Line

For more details read the original article. It is well written and well worth reading if you have teenagers.