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I believe that any lesson's on finance, which allowing your child to grow, is a positive. Most professionals in the field will agree that the lessons of the past, are not proving to be very valuable to our teens, in today's economic reality. "A penny saved, is a penny earned" has become obsolescent to invest and make your money work as hard as you do.

For any lesson to be effective, we as adults must have limits and controls over the outcome. Many times, Parents are all too easy with trusting our child. We would all like to believe that we can fully trust our teens, and they would not even dream of hurting us. Especially when we emphasis the importance of this instrument we are handing them; not to mention the responsibility that we are entrusting them with.

I have seen families absolutely torn apart, because Little Susie, or Little John, was trusted with a "real" line of credit, on the parent's dime. Then unknowingly to the Parents, their prized child ran up a thousand dollar bill and lost their jobs. Well it is no wonder that soon the phone is going to start ringing, with the credit card collection departments, demanding payment.

As a child, the children protected from the issues pertaining to the financial woes, of the family. From memory, I can recall the times when the kids, in our family, were very skeptical when mom and dad claimed they were hurting financially. It caused many issues between our family members. When my father sometimes would come out and proclaimed that we, the kids, had no business asking about our financial issues; that alone caused issues.

We have found that when we are not open when finances are tight, we are faced with our children's skepticism. We have learned that we must be open, while still protecting them from the vary harsh realities of the impacts adults must endure. But, we also have an obligation to show them that there are some very "real" consequences when bad decisions are made. Our children have taught us some very insightful lessons, during our teaching them lessons of finance.

One must recognize that in order to make your money go further, one must work in the realms of credit and credit extension. I do not advocate, allowing any child getting in over their financial heads. As mentioned before, this can be suicide for the entire financial well-being of the family. However, such lessons of responsibility in financial affairs is paramount, to ensure that when your child goes out in the world, they are taught how to

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