I think my parents did a great job teaching us about finances and budgeting. I was one of six kids and Dad was a teacher, so there was never much money around (like Tri Girl--I lived in hand-me-downs, even wearing my brother's old clothes). We got allowances starting at age six--50 cents base pay, then every year on our birthday we'd get a five cents a week raise. So at my peak (around age 11) I was bringing in roughly $1.00 a week. They did this entirely to teach us about budgeting--Dad ran a "store" at home, where he'd keep the extra school supplies and we could buy them out of our allowance (and he'd sell them one crayon at a time!). I was always the saver in the family--I remember going on one family vacation and I was the richest kid in the family, with $21 saved up.
Once we hit middle school, we were expected to earn our own money--allowances stopped at age 12, so I babysat and delivered newspapers for a while back when kids used to be able to do those things. As soon as I was 16 I got a job at a garden center. We got checking accounts along with these jobs, and Dad taught us how to balance the checkbook (odd now that I think about it--Mom always was the one who paid bills at home, but Dad was the financial teacher). Throughout high school I was expected to pay for everything myself except school books and supplies and any activity done with the family. But clothes, entertainment, any activity I did with my friends, gifts for others, etc.--I paid for all of that. We each had to pay a portion of our college costs too (whatever the Financial Aid people said was our contribution, my parents asked for at the start of each year to pay the bill, so I'd earn money all summer and hand it over in August, and we all took out the maximum allowed amount in student loans), and all of everything in college (same as high school, only now paying for books, supplies, and all of our "household" stuff like toiletries and laundry supplies.). And absolutely no cars--they were clear on that from when we were little. We could use the family car when it was free once we could drive, but we had to pay for gas and insurance ourselves.
Dad did some formal education with us about investments and how interest rates and mortgages worked, but it was always a one-time thing so I remember that he talked about it, but when the time came for me to deal with these things I couldn't remember most of what he said. I got into a bit of trouble with credit card debt--that was one thing not on his radar when we were young because people pretty much didn't have credit cards, and if they did, it meant they were financially pretty secure. When I was in college the cc companies started with the easy credit stuff, but it still wasn't out of control until much later. My cc debt problems happened after having a second child and not enough money to pay for child care, so we were using credit cards for daily expenses.
More than anything, my parents taught by example--they lived extraordinarily frugally and taught us to do the same. I have to admit that as stressful as it is to have DH unemployed for nearly two years now, I'm very proud that we've been able to cut expenses enough that we aren't behind on any of our bills and haven't taken on any more debt.
