That's a great article, Orchid! Thanks for sharing.

As for my answer to your excellent question about how I became more financially literate - my parents tried to start me out young with a small allowance. I had to save part of it, give part of it to church each week, and I could spend part of it...

Then when I was 12 or so, I started baby-sitting, and earning money on my own, in order to buy my own clothes, records, etc.

By 16 I had a job in a boutique, which made me more than babysitting, but still not much more than minimum wage.

I also had my own checking account, and had to keep it solvent. My parents took me to the bank to open the account, and the bank president told them that they would ultimately be responsible for my account.

My Dad, however, took me aside at home and told me he WOULD NOT bail me out if I overdrew the account, so not to do that. He kept his word. He did not bail me out, but the amounts i accidentally overdrew were small... Though the embarrassment was big. And a learning tool.

My parents did this because my mother had no idea how to manage her household accounts when they first got married. She ended up taking "home management" classes from the Home Ec college, in order to learn how to manage her accounts. And I know she wished she had known how to manage her money before she got married... Which is why they consciously tried to make sure all of us kids got hands on money management experiences when we were young.

Most of their efforts were hands on and practical: they gave us small allowances starting young, and then had us get jobs and use this money we earned to buy clothes, family Christmas and birthday presents, etc.

As a result, I quickly recognized how hard I had to work to earn these things.

My sibs and I all had jobs all through high school and college. In college, my parents paid for our tuition and books at a local college - actually we all attended a Big 10 School, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but it was local to us.

But my parents did not for housing, cars or spending money. They said we could live free at home and take the bus to school.

I wanted to live on campus, so I had to earn the money to do that. I also wanted to join a sorority so as to have a way to spend time away from living at home, so there were additional costs I had to fund personally. I lucked out on the car, and bought an old one from my grandfather for VERY CHEAP. But then I had to buy my own car insurance, gas, tires, etc.,

I would say that I learned money management by the "school of hard knocks," but I started out early and with small amounts of money. So my first mistakes were not of the "can't pay the mortgage variety."

I am not a financial whiz, by any means. I did not study finance in college, though my brother did - he has an MBA with an emphasis in finance.

I thought my parents' financial teachings worked fine for me, so I employed the same plan with my kids.

I was both delighted and sobered when our daughter told us - as a college sophomore, when she moved into an apartment with roommates -- that she was the only one of her housemates who had EVER been to the grocery store, and had any idea how to shop...

Apparently too many parents these days DO NOT train their kids to manage money.

So based on those experiences, I am all for the training the teacher in your article is giving his kids. Kids love to learn from experiential games. fun and learning SHOULD go together whenever possible, IMHO.

(We DID have a teacher in high school who had his students learn about the stock market by pretending to buy and manage a stock portfolio and I recall that this was a very popular segment.)

And I think the Junior Achievement program in the US (is it also in Canada?) helps a lot of kids learn how to run a business.

I'd love to hear more stories on this topic from others here in the forum! Money management is a crucial topic.

(Sadly, when my grandfather died at 75, my parents learned that my grandmother had no idea how to write a check or manage her budget.

She had always just paid cash, charged stuff or run accounts at the butcher, etc., and let my grandfather worry about paying for it. Trying to learn how to manage money at THAT AGE is waaay to late!!)

Anne