How to Teach Your Teenagers About Money

When I graduated from college in 1972, the only thing I knew about money was not to spend more than I earned, unless I was buying a car, a house, or an education.  And while this knowledge has saved me from the miseries of consumer debt and credit card interest, it didn't prepare me for the new economy of the 21^st century.

This economy actually began in the 1980's, with President Reagan's determination to shrink the safety net and with the increasing use of desktop computers.  And as I saw what was going on around me, I realized that I didn't know how to adapt, so I turned to my favorite source of knowledge, books.

I've read dozens of books about business and personal finance over the past twenty-five years, and the two I would recommend for teenagers are Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, and Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.

Think and Grow Rich was first published in 1937, when the U.S. was still mired in the Great Depression.  It was probably the first mainstream book about money that talked about attitude more than about action.  Just look at some of the chapter titles:  "The Power of Thought," "Desire:  The Starting Point of All Achievement," "Faith:  Visualizing and Believing in the Attainment of Desire," "Imagination:  The Workshop of the Mind," "The Subconscious Mind:  The Connecting Link," and "The Brain:  A Broadcasting and Receiving Station for Thought."

Do these titles sound familiar?  They certainly remind me of many of the New Age self-help books.  But Hill didn't base his plan on academic theory or religion; he based it on twenty years of studying the most successful men of his era, from Henry Ford to Theodore Roosevelt to Thomas Edison.