A Good Time to Teach Kids About Money

My column on motivating kids to save (see "Money Smart Women," Feb.) continues to generate advice from readers. Here's a sampling:

- Janet Bodnar 

"For our kids, we devised an income/savings program that we called '40/30/20/10,'" write Craig and Lisa Olson. "Each week when they got their allowance, we would put 40% of it into their hands for spending, 30% into an envelope for short-term savings, 20% into an envelope for long-term savings and 10% into an envelope for church.

The kids didn't like the program too much at the time, but now they both tell us that it was good training for budgeting as adults." Lee Hobbs Steege writes that she and her husband "didn't like our sons watching a lot of television, so we gave them the option to earn $200 a month if they watched only two hours of TV a week." They used the money to buy stock, she says.

As someone who has written extensively about kids and money, I'm always encouraged by success stories like these from parents who have given their children a head start on managing money. Without guidance, it's too easy for kids to go astray.