Smart shopping with Amazon

Today because of online stores, teens can access a wide variety of merchandise not easily monitored. That is why Amazon has introduced a new way for teens to shop, empowering them through smart spending. Now teens can shop independently while their parents stay in the loop. This new method can balance independence, convenience and trust. Parents can now approve orders and set preapproved spending limits that is within the family budget. This can be an essential teaching tool for your teen while monitoring their online shopping behavior. That is why parenting author and lifestyle expert Jeannette Kaplun, joins The Hype Magazine in a satellite one on one interview to discuss empowering your teen through smart shopping.

Jeannette – you say it’s imperative to start teaching our teens healthy spending habits early, why?

You can never start too early. These are conversations that we should be having with our kids because we can’t expect them to know everything. We need to discuss with them financial responsibilities, how to save, how to stick to a budget and especially with teens we need to help them make smarter choices down the road.

What new options are available to help parents do this?

Well there are many tools available, but one that I feel helps empower parents — Amazon right now is offering a really convenient way for teens to actually have their own login. So, parents create a separate login for their teen and that way every time that the teen wants to actually buy something through the app, the parent gets an alert. The parent can actually approve or deny that purchase via text message, via email and that way you can have a conversation with your teen about the difference between wanting and needing, teach them how to filter by price, how to be a smart online shopper and figure out how to use the reviews that are available. Also, when teens do feel much savvier with online shopping, what you can do is a preset spending limit so parents don’t have to pre-approve every single purchase but only get an alert each time that their teen actually buys something within that limit.

How can they monitor spending while still giving them a little freedom to shop?

The way that this works it really helps kids right because first of all they’re already spending money, teens are already spending money, they’re already using online tools and are already using text messages. So, this feels very natural and easy to use. But at the same time, it gives control to the parent. The parent is always in the loop whether you use the default option in which you need to pre-approve every single purchase or whether you’re using the preset spending limit, you are always in the know of What your teen is actually purchasing. So that way parents can really keep track of those online purchases and it enables them to have these conversations with their teen about whether that was a smart choice or whether there was a better option or how to stay within budget because when you do the preset spending limit, your team needs to stick to that budget. They can’t go over that limit and that allows you as a parent to really teach them the importance of actually sticking to that set budget and understanding that sometimes, you might want something but you can’t afford it.

Where can we go for additional information?

Your readers can actually go to amazon.com/forteens

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Tags: DCypher Studios

About the Author

David Morales is the Executive Editor of The Hype magazine. A graduate of Eastern Michigan University, David has a background as an artist manager, writer, blogger, drummer, and in the human services industry. He is passionate about helping others, learning and has a deep empathy for the creative process. You can follow his social media @dcypherstudios