Credit Canada

When Sonia Regier's Grade 9 and 10 math students return from March Break they can look forward to more than fractions and exponents.

With the help of a financial planner, Ms. Regier will be giving her students a well-timed lesson in the market meltdown, one she hopes will teach them financial literacy skills.

"Having a recession happen or having an election, that's a real teachable moment," says Ms. Regier. "We're trying to get the kids to realize that just because they are 14 and 15 doesn't mean they can't start planning ahead."

If the current financial crisis isn't reason enough to speak to young people about money matters, the new federal budget should be. The budget called for the creation of a task force to make recommendations for a national strategy on financial literacy.

And yet, with so many adults scrambling to wrap their heads around basic money matters, experts say not enough is being done in the classroom and in the home to teach kids basic financial skills.

"We always say, 'Well, what do you want to do after high school career-wise?' But we never say to them, 'What are you going to do with your money?" says Ms. Regier, who teaches at Eastdale Secondary School in Welland, Ont.

Last spring, Ms. Regier brought in Philip Jones, a certified financial planner at Edward Jones Investments, to speak to her students about investing, how to deal with debt and other financial basics. After the talk's success, Ms. Regier now plans to invite another financial planner to talk to her students about the ins and outs of the recession.

"Most kids, the only thing they know about money is that you buy stuff with it. The concept of saving and investing is pretty foreign to most high school kids," says Mr. Jones.

"The consequences are potentially dangerous. As they move into their adult lives and they're in a position to have excess cash flow or disposable income, they make poor choices. We're seeing that right now in the economic situation we're in, where people have over-extended themselves in a lot of areas and have been focusing on spending rather than saving."

Unfortunately, little is being done in Canada's education system to better equip young people with financial know-how. Instruction in financial basics is, at best, scattered throughout the high school curriculum in most Canadian provinces. Ms. Regier's Grade 9 business class, for example, has one small section devoted to savings and compound interest.

"I think it should be part of the standard curriculum," says Mr. Jones. "Our schools are there to prepare our youth for adulthood. We teach them sex education, why shouldn't we teach them financial education?"

Laurie Campbell, executive director of Credit Canada, a credit counseling service, says a course on financial literacy should be mandatory for every student in high school.

"It's a huge hole. Two of the most fundamental things we need to learn as young people growing up are how to raise children and how to manage money. They're the most fundamental things in life and both of those huge issues have not been addressed seriously by the education system," Ms. Campbell says.

"This is one of those things that drives me nuts," says Al Nagy, a certified financial planner in Edmonton. While so much of education is concerned with equipping young people with the skills to pursue careers, he says very little is done to provide them with the skills they need to manage the money they earn once they land jobs.

He says parents need to take a more active role in teaching their children money management skills from an early age. "Get your kids money savvy by giving them a certain amount every week and letting them do what they want with it, but making them aware of what saving is and how compounding can help them achieve great things and great wealth in the long term," says Mr. Nagy.

Brent Dobson, of Moonjar Canada, says it is crucial to teach young children the value of saving and wise spending, but also of giving back to the community. Moonjar sells a line of "Moonjar Money Boxes" for children to divide their money between what they spend, what they save and what they share.

The earlier children develop these financial habits, says Mr. Dobson, the deeper ingrained they will be as they grow up. "It's important to start financial literacy training from a young age and children really need to be engaged at a young age in order to learn the positive money values we hope they'll develop," he says.

Parents, however, have to set a good example. "If you're out there buying Gucci and label items all the time, then you can expect that your children will grow up with that kind of mentality. The boundaries that you set, the budgeting that you do and how you work with your children to explain things, is going to have a big impact on your children when it comes to money," says Ms. Campbell.

She recommends talking to children about the cost of a mortgage and how much it costs to pay the bills. It's a topic parents and teachers have been silent about for too long, adds Ms. Campbell.
"We've been raised to have this mentality that we can't talk about these things in an honest and pragmatic way with our kids," she says. "But the bottom line is, we can and we should."

*Material reprinted with the express permission of "The National Post Company", a CanWest Media Inc. Partnership.