Where do our children learn about money? Not many schools include lessons to help kids become savvy money managers. The media and childhood peers pressure kids to fit in by buying the right clothes, CDs and electronic gizmos. It's up to you, their parents, to make sure the lessons, attitudes, and values they acquire meet your standards. In fact, a financial literacy survey released by the Jump$tart Coalition in April 2000 found that teens whose parents talk to them about money scored higher than the average teen surveyed.

Written for parents, this portion of Practical Money Skills for Life will provide you with informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking ways to teach your children about money. You will find this information divided into three age groups: preschool through second grade, third through sixth grade, and seventh grade through high school. Together, these groups are designed to help parents teach financial responsibility with tools such as:

• allowances
• savings goals and incentives
• investment basics
• budgets

Written by Jayne Pearl, author of Kids and Money: Giving Them the Savvy to Succeed Financially (Bloomberg Press, 1999), this parenting section offers plenty of practical insights and ideas for navigating children through our increasingly cash-oriented culture.

Each age group includes easy-to-implement programs, projects, games, and discussion starters, plus online calculators, resources, and links, all intended to develop in your children a tolerance for delayed gratification, the discipline to make trade-offs, and the ability to tell themselves no (so you don't always have to). These tools and lessons, communicated clearly and implemented consistently, can help parents raise financially responsible and confident children.