I recently spoke with Liz Weston at MSN Money about the recent Cambridge University research that confirms our youngest are learning money habits that are SET by age 7.  So great to see others realizing what we have known all along – it pays to start the “money talk” when your kids are young!  Here’s a link to the article:

http://on-msn.com/1bvqChh

Are you doing any of these things already with your children?  When did you start the conversation about money with your kids?  Did you get the same results from each of your children?

As we head into National Financial Literacy Month in April, we would like to hear about your own experiences to help teach your children about money.   What has been successful – or not so successful – in your quest to help your children learn the basics of personal finance?  We’ve created a short survey with a few questions about allowance to better understand your challenges and triumphs so we can provide you with advice and tips this year that  truly will help your family.

Please take our short survey.

We all make mistakes – that is how we learn.  Writer Terri Cettina asked me how to handle kids money mistakes and was surprised when I cheered the idea!

How to Handle Kids’ Money Mistakes – Eqiufax

Virtual transactions have become a way of life for so many of us.  The convenience of making digital deposits, withdrawals and managing our accounts on the run makes them almost indispensible – and necessary – in our digital world.  At least for adults.  But more websites are popping up with virtual tools to help teach kids money management.   I was recently asked to weigh-in on what I thought of allowance tracking websites.  Here’s the link to the article:

Helping or Hurting Kids? Allowance-Tracking Websites – Loop 21

Ultimately, it comes down to this – If teachers are teaching that two plus two equals four, they don’t just write it on the board. They take two toy blue houses out of one bin, two toy red houses out of the other, they wrap a rubber band around it and, all of the sudden, the kid looks and it makes sense.  Everybody loves these online solutions, but they’re not curing the social ills of financial illiteracy.