Teaching Your Child Money Habits for Life

Financial responsibility goes beyond the porcelain pig.

By Kimberly Castro July 30, 2010 | 12:00 a.m. EDT

For most adults, the first brush with money management came in the form of a porcelain pig. A nickel here or a dollar there for every chore completed or good deed. Financial responsibility, for the most part, stopped with the piggy bank. Many of the Echo Boomer generation—those born between the 1970s and early 1990s—agree that learning how to spend, save, and invest wisely just wasn't a part of life's lessons growing up. "I wish I understood the value and attributes of money at a young age," says Christopher Rogers, a 33-year-old, New York native and associate director at a financial services firm. "Although I grew up around a successful family, no one instilled the value of money in me until I began to do it myself, and fairly recently, too."