Spending, Scams and Money Trouble
This is the section people arrive at through a search made in a bad mood. The money is gone, or there is a charge nobody recognises, or a conversation about car insurance has gone sideways.
Most of it is fixable and a fair amount of it is normal. The pages here try to separate the part that is an ordinary teenage mistake from the small number of situations that are actually a problem, because treating the first like the second is how you lose the ability to help with the second.
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My Teen Spent All Their Money. Now What?
Usually the right move is to do nothing about the money and rebuild next month together. Plus the warning signs that mean something else is going on.
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Should Teens Pay for Their Own Gas and Car Insurance?
The workable middle is the teen paying for gas plus a share of the premium, or the rise they caused. How to price it to what they earn, and how to write it down.
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Buy Now Pay Later and Teenagers
Buy now pay later is credit that does not feel like it. Stacking several plans does the damage, because no screen anywhere shows the running total.
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In-Game Purchases and the Charge Nobody Recognises
Start with the platform, not the bank. Purchase history shows what was bought, refunds come first and disputes last, and removing the saved card is the fix.
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Scams That Target Teenagers
Money muling, fake checks, sextortion and account-trading scams: what each looks like from the inside, the tell, and exactly where to report it.