When Terrikaye Callendar goes shopping, she feels her wallet burning a hole in her purse. It gnaws at her, triggering a compulsion to spend on clothing, food or sneakers items. The nagging sensation is driven by the desire to “have it.” An 11th grader at The Marie Curie High School near Van Cortlandt Park, she sees the habit tough to break. “It’s hard to see something and you know you have the money and don’t buy it.”

Zunisabel Castillo spends money as freely as Terrikaye.  “I do spend a lot of money on hair products,” said the 17-year-old, who once spent $20 on a bottle of shampoo, considered an above average price. Zunisabel said her spending is driven by “impulse.”

Self-control is a similar issue for Deanna Flores, a fellow student at The Marie Curie High School. It’s not the material item that compels her to buy, but the money itself she calls a “huge temptation.”

The ability to harness money management skills is the kind of thinking that BronxWorks, a nonprofit organization in the borough, seeks to encourage in a borough where the average salary is $34,000, according to data from the 2010 US Census.

“A lot of young people are not informed,” said Shalima L. McCants, a program director at BronxWorks. She works with youth ages 16 to 24 to “teach them about budgets and stipends and have banks teach them about opening, saving, and credit cards.” Money management workshops are held exclusively at several of centers operated by BronxWorks.

But the onus on lavish teen spending falls on parents, a reason why BronxWorks steps in when noticing the lessons aren’t coming from home. “Parents don’t inform students,” McCants said.

And though some parents may not be teaching children how to spend money, they are certainly bankrolling their child’s lifestyle. Zunisabel explained that her mother has never noticed her spending habits, despite Zunisabel receiving as much as $100 from her. The cash is further supplemented by Zunisabel’s job. “I’ve held down three jobs before,” she said. Her father has passed, allowing her to secure her dad’s Social Security payments. “My mom sort of gives me an allowance from that money,” she said.

Likewise, Terrikaye, the teen who feels money burning a hole in her purse, gets cash from her parents.

The trend in teen spending has been consistently reported by Piper Jaffray, an investment bank firm, which revealed in an April report that teens spend 21 percent of their money on clothes, 21 percent on food and 10 percent on accessories/personal care.

“Teens spend more on their wants than on their needs,” said McCants.

This point worries Deanna.  She said, “After I spend too much money I become stressed out because then I don’t have enough money to buy certain things that I need, simply because I didn’t have enough self control to not buy something only because I liked it.”