by Angie Mohr

Created on: April 17, 2008

Think back to your school days. What subjects did you learn in the classroom? Reading, writing, and math for sure. History, geography, and science as you progressed through the grades. Perhaps even art and music. All of these subjects are important and certainly useful to you at some point in your life (even though you probably swore up and down when you were eleven that you would never have any practical use for algebra!).

The one subject that is not usually taught in the school system is the one that will have a huge impact on your life each and every day: money. How to earn it, spend it, invest it, and pass it on to the next generation.

The inability to manage money:

Is the number 1 cause of divorce in North America
Is responsible for the astronomical jump in personal bankruptcies in the past decade
Perpetuates generational poverty
Leads to stress, poor health, and poor self-image

If money is so important, why isn't it being taught in our school systems? There are probably as many answers to that question as there are educators, but one of the major reasons is that money is seen as a commercial rather than an academic subject. Whatever the reasons, the fact that the subject of money is not taught in schools simply means that it must be taught at home. In many families, however, there are reasons why financial savvy is not being passed from generation to generation:
Parents feel like they have never learned the skills to manage money themselves, much less be able to teach their children.
They feel that talking about money with their children is crass. "Good" families don't discuss income or wealth.
They are afraid that discussing money will scare the children and make them fearful that they are "poor".
They are embarrassed about the family's financial situation and are afraid that their children will see what terrible money managers they have been.

All of these reasons are rooted in the traditions that parents have been raised in. If these fears are not overcome, the end result is that their children in elementary school learn about money the same way they do about sex and drugs; from friends, television, and what they perceive that their parents are doing.

When children have to learn about finances from what they perceive their parents doing, they will be both forming some inaccurate pictures of their parents' money management, and picking up their parents' bad money habits, which eventually, they will pass on to their own children. As a small business owner,

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