As a parent, you need to start teaching children about money as soon as possible. The reason for this is that a majority of children are not being taught money management skills in school anymore.

I know from experience that after 12 years of public school plus 4 years of college, the major message I got was "borrow your way to success." It was never directly put that way, but the age where debt is being marketed is getting younger and younger every year. Many parents may be surprised when they start talking to their children about money and what they think they know. There are also several things that you can do to help your child make good choices about money as they grow into adulthood.

Something that I've heard of many parents doing with very young children (under the age of 6) is having a large jar or other clear container in their room. When they do something good (pick up toys, good behavior, etc.) that the parents want to reward them for, they put some change or dollars (your choice) into the container. Once it builds up to a certain point, the money is taken out and the child can spend the money on whatever they choose. This is teaching delayed gratification at a young age once they figure out the longer they leave the money, the better item they can get later on.

With elementary school aged children, play money is a fun place to start as well. I had a set when I was younger, and my brother and I used to play "store" and buy each other's toys. At this age you just want to keep it fun and have them recognize the different values (both change and dollars) and that money has value for transactions.

This led to kind of a funny thing with me. I ended up starting a real business at age 9 but didn't realize it at the time. It started when a friend of mine offered me a real dollar for a 25 cent key chain I had on my backpack. Something clicked in my mind. I used the dollar to buy 4 more 25 cent toys and sold them each for $1 to different people. After several weeks of this, I was one rich little kid. Unfortunately, I was also selling to kids who were giving me their lunch money without me knowing it. One trip to the principal's office later, and my first business was closed. The good thing about that though was I learned that businesses work. Even though I didn't start another one until 10 years later, the idea that the best businesses are "win-win" was also learned from that experience.

Most of the time, schools teach people

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