Teaching kids about money

[MSChioma]

As a responsible parent, do you have a duty to ensure that you teach your children about money from an early age?

I certainly do, and invested quite a few pounds in ensuring that I gave most of the children I bought Christmas presents for a useful gift (a workbook that helps them learn and practice how to set goals, budget, save and spend wisely) as opposed to toys and clothes that are a passing fancy. However, apparently, the gifts did not go down too well with their parents as the gift seemed to apparently imply that they were not parenting properly by already teaching their kids about money. And some felt it wasn't a topic the kids needed to bother about until they were much older.

Am I the only one out here who believes that the sooner a child starts learning about money and the value of money, the better off they'll be in the future. I mean, the kids I bought the workbook for were aged between 9 and 14 and it wasn't a book about investing on the stock market or trading in listed derivatives. It was simply a workbook that highlighted the benefits of setting goals, saving and spending wisely and provided them with a tool for tracking their saving and spending over the year. Please refer to the website to see what I mean. It is www.moneysmartworld.com

I would like to know other people's thoughts on the issue of if parents should teach their children about money and when is a good time to start.

wheresthehamster, I doubt that learning about money would really give children more worries - provided they're not subjected to the Hilaire Belloc cautionary tale about the spendthrift child whose parents were depending on the contents of his piggy bank to save them from ruin but found it empty. (Can't find a link unfortunately.) The unknown and misunderstood is usually far more worrying then the known and understood.

Dh and I have always tried to teach our children about money. But they would not have appreciated a workbook for a Christmas present.

"However I must say that I am quite dissapointed by the nature of responses and intellect levels displayed. First, the language (FFS) put forward by chasingsquirrels and reference to spam etc are below expectation."

marvellous