Teens often spend money on predictable things like food and clothes, but also less predictable things like stocks and shows. Some have jobs, and others get an allowance or rely on gifts. No matter how the money is allocated, these choices reveal a lot about the financial priorities, interests, and goals of the modern adolescent.
Thelonious Holmes and Mattia Schiavon run the Finance Club at BHS, which they inherited from the previous presidents last year. They are both very financially well-versed, and have a passion for learning about economics and finance. Both Holmes and Schiavon decided to join and take leadership roles within the club due to a lack of financial literacy clubs at BHS, and they hold presentations every other week. “If students gain a general understanding of finance by listening to our lectures, I think it'll help them a lot,” Schiavon said.
“I see students spending on a lot of material items, like clothes, food, (and) cars,” Holmes said. While excessive consumption of material items is a significant issue for teens, the bigger problem is sports gambling, according to Holmes. “Even at our age, there are a lot of kids in our grades who are spending money on sports gambling.” He believes that people, at a bare minimum, are benefitted by material items in the short term. However, sports gambling and betting generally is not beneficial in any regards as it is highly unpredictable and skewed against the better. Furthermore, despite the prevalence among students, sports betting is illegal for teens to participate in. “There's a lot of online gambling culture now, and I think a lot of people are losing money,” Holmes said. Schiavon added that picking stocks is a gamble as well. “I see a lot of people doing that online, like day trading and that kind of stuff. It's really, really harmful,” Schiavon said.
Some tips that they offered for saving money in the long run is investing in a Roth IRA, investing in a 529 plan for college and other education, and not spending too much money if you don’t have a steady source of income. “I invest about 95% of my money, and I try to spend as little as possible,” Holmes said. “But, if something brings you joy, and you benefit from it materially, that's what money's for, right? But I try to invest as much as I can.”
Currently, Depop — an online thrift store featuring hundreds of thousands of used items available with a single click — is a website that many teens are spending a lot of money on. Mia Kumar, a junior at BHS likes to buy, sell, and repurpose old clothes on Depop. “I definitely spend almost all my money on clothes or food,” Kumar said. According to Kumar, she has turned a substantial profit by selling on Depop, and uses that money to purchase an item from the site about once every two weeks. “A lot of the activities I do with my friends are either going shopping or going somewhere to eat food. So both those times, I spent lots of money,” Kumar said.. She feels like she maintains a relatively conservative budget compared to her friends.
Rea Horgan is also someone who saves her money, “I try to set a budget every week on how much I'm gonna spend, or sometimes I'll try and do a no spend week where I don't go out to lunch any day.” Like Kumar, Horgan allocates most of her spending money to food and clothes. “I think living here, everything is definitely accessible. Especially where our school is located, with how many restaurants there are within very minimum walking distance,” Horgan said. She added that it is easy to find cheap food near campus, allowing for a stricter budget.
Location — as well as time period — can affect what teens spend money on. “With social media, and all the videos that you see, I get a lot of ads trying to get me to buy something,” Horgan said. “Our parents didn’t have Apple Pay. With Apple Pay, it's really easy. You don't have to remember to carry money, you're just like, ‘oh, I have my phone, I have money,” she explained.. “I think it's much easier for teens to spend money now because of digital shopping.” Schiavon said. He mentioned that our parents never had things like TikTok Shop and other accessible online shopping. “Overall, I think financial literacy is a very important skill to have,” Holmes explained. “I would say that anyone can be financially literate.”