How to Be a Successful Teenager

Here's how to be a successful teenager.

N.B For more information and updates visit www.campusflava.com  

Steps

    1
    Save Money. If you haven't already been saving money (and even if your parents have something set up for you) save every penny you earn. You should also get a job if you spend a lot of money. It is beyond important that you have your own stash of money for when things go horribly wrong. You never know what is going to happen and so you need to have your own personal safety net! This is the best things you can do for yourself! You need at least to save $1000 dollars before you can begin to feel safe. Once you reach that much you should still keep going.
    2
    Learn to Drive. Even if you think you don't need to know how to drive you do. And even if you don't plan on needing a car for a while you absolutely need to be able to take yourself places. Just having a license is the second best thing you can do to make yourself more self sufficient and independent from your parents. Not so you can run away and steal the car when your parents tick you off, it's so you won't be 20 years old without a license and begging for rides to work and to your college classes because you don't know how to drive and you don't have money for a car. That's just another example of why you need to save as much money as possible.
    3
    Get a Job. Having your own job builds positive character and can help you mature at a more rapid rate. This may be harder to obtain in slow economic times, but the experience of looking for a job will grow you up as well. It gives you a great sense of pride to work a shift and pick up your paycheck. It also helps to teach you valuable leadership skills, professionalism, and the value of a dollar. For instance, if you make $8 an hour and want to buy a video game that costs $60 you would have to work at least 7.5 hours. And that's not even counting the tax that comes out (taxes are on the rise and that may influence your views on politics) of your paycheck so you would probably have to work 8 hours. And the average 16 year old only works 15 hours out of an entire week.
    4
    Understand Credit. And learn how to build credit. Credit cards are not the only way to get credit. You can build credit by making car payments, by getting a loan from a credit union and making good payments on that, you can also get credit by making payments on a cell phone contract but all these things must be in your name. Your credit score is the measurement of how trustworthy you are to agencies that loan you things like apartments, money, and cars. The report represents your track record of if and how you repay lenders. And determines whether or not someone will loan you anything, allow you to live in their apartment complex, or how high an interest rate will be. Go to this website to learn more about credit; it's a fun interactive game developed by the US government to teach the importance of a good credit score.
    5
    Continue Your Education. These days, you're not valuable to anybody unless you get a degree. And there are ENDLESS ways to pay for school! (Another reason you need to do number 1. You should also consider going away to school at least for your freshmen year because it will help you learn some of the things detailed in number 3 (but not all). People respect you more when you do your worst to better yourself and your education. They also cut you more slack in life if you're trying to go to school.

 Tips

    Communicate with your parents/guardians your concerns about your future as soon as they pop into your head. Even if you're not sure they will understand, you are going to need all the help you can get and you need to tap every resource possible in order to be successful and independent.
    Start a spreadsheet on excel that will help show you how you spend your money so that you can learn how to save more money and learn how to budget for the things you need.